Brian's Musings

The smoke or should I say the cloud of fungal spores is dissipating after the 2011 harvest and we now have a clearer view of quality and quantity. 

This is a really difficult situation to manage.

The quantity of quality wine produced from most areas will be vastly reduced and the quantity of really bad wine will be vastly increased.

 » Read more about: Vintage 2011  »

The rain is predicted to arrive tomorrow so the last sparkling autumn day is with us after nearly two weeks of glorious weather. If only this weather had prevailed in the last weeks of March and the first weeks of April but that’s viticulture. 

I feel grateful that we have very selectively harvested some very nice Chardonnay from The Tiers,

 » Read more about: What’s normal at Foggy Hill?  »

Almost the latest Easter possible and in only a handful of vintages over the past 33 at Piccadilly would we still have fruit to harvest and fermentations in exponential phase on April the 23rd. Despite the very late harvest, Easter is providing family time down on the Fleurieu Peninsula with a sausage sizzle at the beautiful Seabrook Farm on the edge of the Great Southern Ocean and the Deep Creek National Park.

 » Read more about: Easter  »

Cool climate sceptics take note. 

There are those in higher latitude viticultural climes who claim ownership of “real cool climate”.

I think this is mostly meant to imply the Australian main land  and California at least are incapable of producing “real cool climate wines” and are immune to the effects of vintage variation and excluded from the benefits of achieving grape maturity in the last gasp of autumn as the leaves fall off the vine.

 » Read more about: Cool climate sceptics take note  »

This is a year to have small low close spaced Cabernet Sauvignon vines. We left at 5am on Monday still mildly affected by receding wedding hangover and arrived at a drizzly Whalebone Vineyard at 8.30 after the obligatory “steak, onion and tomato” pie at the Naracoorte bakery. Our worst fears went unspoken as we entered the vineyard having been preoccupied with Foggy Hill and Tiers (and wedding) over the past week.

 » Read more about: The advantage of low vines.  »

Well it happened. The pickers chose. The most diverse group of new Australian arrivals including some very tall people from the north of Africa arrived to harvest our diminutive vines. Foggy Hill was harvested on Tuesday and Wednesday in the most spectacular autumn weather imaginable. Sitting on the back of the bin behind the tractor,

 » Read more about: The pickers chose  »

April 5th and we have harvested the older block of 114, 115 and 777 Pinot Noir clones from Foggy Hill at 5 tonnes/hectare as expected but exactly one month later than last year.  Foggy Hill has had more than 200mm’s of rain on it since January 1st, 100mm’s more than last year. From October to the end of March Foggy Hill only received 1000°C days of heat above 10°C which is marginal for ripeness and in German wine region ranges.

 » Read more about: Harvesting of Foggy Hill  »

As I have pointed out before, at the end of February, counter-intuitively, all of Tapanappa’s terroirs had accumulated marginally more heat than average for the October to February growing season so far. Days have been cooler than average but nights have been warmer than the days have been cooler because of persistent cloud cover.

March is set to change all of that.

 » Read more about: April Fool’s Day  »

I am sitting in Auckland, waiting to go through to Adelaide at 3am Adelaide time, having started from Chile 18hours ago after a twelve hour-day in the vineyards of Alto Jahuel and Leyda. It will be raining on my Pinot Noir on the Fleurieu Peninsula and on my Chardonnay in the Piccadilly Valley when I arrive home in 6 hours time.

 » Read more about: The places I work.  »

All stable in Chile at least. The Chileans understand the risks of living in a shaky land and empathise with the New Zealanders and especially with the Japanese and the shattering dimension of their land’s torsion and the consequences.

It is interesting to observe La Nina’s other face on the Chilean shore of the Pacific opposite Australia.

 » Read more about: Of Cycles and Trends  »

Off to Chile at 6am tomorrow morning. Every thing in the Tapanappa vineyards is now about watching the “pot boil” and trying not to take too much notice of the weather predictions. Nothing can be done now but wait for the final cinch of ripening when 10% of the season dictates 40% of the quality.

 » Read more about: Chile (and the net dilemma resolved)  »

Walked Tiers and Foggy Hill after the drizzle cleared this afternoon and the sun shuttered through north-bound clouds. No fruit split and the ground has soaked up the moisture and drained it away. Thank goodness for our slopes and friable freely drained old soils. Thank goodness for the Great Southern Ocean bringing on the front edge of a high with its cooling drying southerly breezes,

 » Read more about: Thank goodness  »

The dilemma that has kept me awake overnight is to not put nets on Tiers and whether to take the nets off Foggy Hill.

Without nets we can spray with sulphur dioxide to control the inevitable Botrytis following berry split which is likely to be happening now.

The morning will tell the story.

 » Read more about: A Net Dilemma  »

We are sampling today in all sites. The rain comes this evening and for the next 2 to 3 days so we need to know where we are with sample composition before the expected 30 to 60 mm’s of rain.

The rain should not worry the fruit as we have cool winds from the south after Tuesday.

 » Read more about: Sampling  »

The Piccadilly Valley weather station in the Tiers Vineyard is broken. We are flying weather blind although using the data from Mount Lofty (700metres ASL) the temperature summation from October to the end of February is 804.1°C days versus the long-term average of 743°C days (+8%).

The summation for The Tiers Vineyard 2 kilometres way at 400metres ASL and adjusted for lapse rate is warmer at 974°C days,

 » Read more about: Weather misperceptions  »

It’s a very busy time of year. The usual “clear the cellar” panic to make way for the new vintage is less frenetic in 2011 as ripening processes in the vineyards are on more normal time-lines and proceeding at a more orderly pace than in the past 5 precocious vintages. Our long term weather forecaster assures us that the “La Nina (wetter) to Neutral events should be the dominant Pacific Ocean-Australian feature from 2011 to mid to late 2016.

 » Read more about: Of Future Vintages and Innovation  »

Australia is apprehensively waking up to the news from north Queensland where Yasi has stalked onto the tropical land.

Here in the Piccadilly Valley we feel a world away from the violence and destruction but as Australians empathise strongly with our compatriots who have clung to their homes by their finger nails overnight.

 » Read more about: Vignerons are weather obsessed.  »

Those not affected can only ever partially comprehend the misery inflicted by flooding. We observe the loss of irreplaceable personal effects, house, livelihood, the devastation of crops and productive land and we try to comprehend the mental and physical effort required to re-establish. Rebuild most will. Most Australians are tied to their homes, location and communities by emotional bonds too strong to be dissolved by floods or razed by fire.

 » Read more about: Of disasters and challenges  »

In October we noted that Brian had been nominated by the Liquor Merchants Associations of Australia (LMAA) for their industry poll to find the 21 most influential liquor identities of last 21 years.

The results are in and it is very pleasing to see Brian recognised by the industry as being amongst the most influential 21 over the past 21 years.

 » Read more about: Brian Croser named in the Top 21 Most Influential Liquor Identities  »

Weather and climate are separate if related concepts that are innocently confused by our own memories of recent weather events and deliberately confused by many involved in the politicised arguments about climate change. Weather describes the atmospheric conditions today and patterns that last up to a decade. Climate is the very long term average of those patterns within recorded experience.

 » Read more about: Whither the Weather  »

It takes just over 24 hours to return from the Eola Hills in Oregon to the Piccadilly Valley in the Adelaide Hills. That’s if you don’t count the day lost as you pass over that invisible line in the Pacific that can condemn you to losing a birthday if you time your travel unwisely.
That’s also if you don’t fly on an A380 out of LA,

 » Read more about: What a difference a day or two makes  »

Great Neighbours.

Neighbours come with mixed reviews. We have always been very lucky, in the few instances in our lives where we have had to live cheek by jowl in university accommodation or suburban streets our neighbours have become life long friends.

For the past 38 years we have lived in relative isolation in the centre of the Piccadilly Valley at the Tiers,

 » Read more about: Neighbours  »

It’s in the tank!

We picked Tunkalilla Vineyard Riesling on Saturday morning with the wind rising and the gloom enclosing from the Pacific Ocean over the hill.
5 tonnes of tart and floral Riesling grapes were under cover in our barn when the Arctic weather furies unleashed. The rain and wind were unlike anything we experience in Piccadilly Valley and for the next 4 days the Eola Hills were trapped in a growling cloud depositing more than 80mms of rain.

 » Read more about: It’s in the tank – Oregon update  »

Congratulations to Brian, who has just been nominated by the Liquor Merchants Association of Australia for their industry poll of the 21 most outstanding and influential individuals in the liquor industry over the last 21 years.

While we know it isn’t what motivates, its always nice to see recognition of hard work.

The online poll is being conducted here.

 » Read more about: Brian nominated for LMAA top 21  »