Gosh, it’s all been happening here at SCB (that’s “Somerled Cellar Bar” for the uninitiated!).

We’ve got so many new vintages, we hardly know what to do with them.

Well, that’s a lie.

“Drink them”, is the answer to that conundrum! But we promise to leave some for you.

We released the 2022 Chardonnay and 2022 Fume Blanc a few weeks back.

This weekend we’ll be cracking open the first bottles of 2020 Sparkling Shiraz.

Keep an eye out for the release of the 2021 Picnic Races Tempranillo Graciano (the 2020 is sadly all gone now).

And we have a 2019 Sparkling Pinot Noir in the wings ready to go when we run out of 2017 (not long now!).

 

With all this excitement, it’s easy to forget that there are bunches of grapes hanging on vines eager to become our 2023 vintages! And they don’t have too much longer to wait either.

Let’s take a look at what’s been happening…

Vintage 2023 update

E-L stage

The earliest varieties have reached 95% colour in CropWatch vineyards and are entering E-L 36, berries with intermediate sugar values. 

Checking back to our E-L stages chart you’ll see that “Harvest”is E-L 38. So, in a matter of weeks, we’ll have the first grapes being picking in the Adelaide Hills

Phenology 

Colour development in Pinot Gris at Lenswood has increased rapidly since the last report. That is probably due to the warm weather we had at the end of last week. Currently, colour development is only a touch behind V22 and V17 (which were also pretty late). 

Colour development in later ripening varieties has continued to be slow. It remains around two weeks behind V22 and five weeks behind V18. The concern her is that we’re going to run out of the nice warm sunny days needed to ripen the grapes properly. Fingers crossed for a nice summery start to Autumn.

 

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Now, I’m going to borrow heavily from last week’s CropWatch report from Hamilton Viticulture. It answered a question that I wanted to touch on this week given how often we get asked it at the Cellar Bar.

Last week we got some hideously hot days, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees three days in a row.

So, how do the vines cope… especially when the grapes are this close to picking?

 

Impact of grape exposure to direct sunlight

When grapes are exposed to heat they can develop a yellowing of exposed berries. 

This happens due to an increase in phenolic compounds (the things that contribute to the taste, color and mouthfeel of the wine) in response to sun exposure and heat damage to berry tissue.

The picture from CropWatch below shows an exposed Grűner Veltliner bunch on the left and its sheltered underside on the right.

Although the most exposed berries are not at the stage of being severely sun and heat damaged the berries have increased their phenolic levels in response to UV light and heat.

Unfortunately, the concentration of phenolics generated may become undesirable in wine produced from exposed bunches.

This next picture (again, thanks to Hamilton Viticulture) shows a Pinot Gris bunch where colour development is reduced due to exposure to sun. The image on the right shows how much more colour the berries protected by that leaf have.

Affected berries have increased levels of phenolics which show as a yellowing of berries. With time and hot weather these berries may become sunburnt as berry temperatures reach extremes which kills all berry tissue. These damaged berries will hopefully desiccate and drop away. Ideally, you don’t want those berries remaining on the bunches as they provide an ideal environment for the development of Botrytis. 

Canopy management aims to minimise the level of sun exposure to berries under hot conditions particularly on the exposed sides of canopies to the north on east-west rows and the west on north-south rows where late afternoon sun exposure in hot weather can cause severe damage.

This protection through canopy management should be in place before hot weather is expected. Depending how bad the damage is across the vineyard growers may need to take action before harvest. They’ll either need to harvest by hand (and not pick the damaged bunches) or go through and dropped the damaged bunches prior to mechanical harvesting. 

 

So, here’s hoping for a Summery, but not TOO Summery start to Autumn! Good grief… who’d ever choose to grow grapes??!

 

OTBN

Now, tell me… did you Open THAT Bottle last weekend?

I’d love to hear all about it in the comments.