This week: 19th. Jan.

Weather Report Week Ending 19/1/07
Maximum Temperature for the week 38.5C (101F) on Tue.
Minimum Temperature for the week 13.4C (56F) on Sun.
Rainfall for the Week 20.2mm (57 points) 1 day of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

I love a sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rain. I will report on more in next weeks blog, but we have had a large tropical low parked to the north of us which has dumped a huge amount of rain on us this weekend. The first 20mm fell on Fri. but up until now (Sun. night) we have had 58mm, in fact parts of SA have had well in excess of 100mm. We have had some damage to our vineyard (berries splitting) and I am in something of a quandary as to what to do about our spray program. This rain has washed off all the chemical we had protecting our fruit from disease, but we are now inside of withholding periods to apply any more on most varieties. I am hoping we don't have another rain event like this one in a fortnight. The first photo this week shows a rather mist and Wintry (?) view of the Barossa Valley. The second is of a Shiraz bunch showing split berries as a result of the rain.

This week in the vineyard:
We are now ready to start picking grapes. We have been sampling most of our whites and we should start picking Sauv. Blanc on Tues of this week. We have Chardonnay at 10.9 baume as well so this should not be too far off picking. The rain will have reduced baumes a little so we will be sampling again before we pick anything, just to make sure they are ready. This week Hardi sprayers did a demo of their current model of vineyard sprayer in our vineyard. The last picture shows this sprayer in our Merlot.