2012 Harvest Report

Winemaker’s Harvest Report

Harvest is an extremely busy time for our very hands-on Winemaker, Chris Carson. During this period he is ever present: picking, transporting, crushing…24/7. We did manage to chase him around the vineyard though to get a few words from him on his thoughts regarding this year’s Harvest. 

“The 2012 Harvest is looking very promising, we had no rain from August until October including during the critical ripening period. Temperatures were quite high through August and this meant that the vines were struggling a bit to function with the heat which led to a delay in the start of ripening and subsequently harvest dates. September temperatures were excellent, sticking around 25 degrees, which is perfect for the ripening stage. All in all, a great year for wine grapes with very balanced fruit ripeness with respect to sugar levels, acidity and flavours. The Pinot Noir fruit looks exceptional and is some of the best Pinot fruit I’ve worked with in my career. It has beautiful flavours with lower than normal brix and lower than expected acids. This meant that this year the picking dates needed to be more precise in order to have better balance. The Mclean Creek Chardonnay also showed lower brix and acids where as the Old Main Road Chardonnay showed lower brix but higher acid levels, which has become the norm with these two sites.”