Weather Report Week Ending 9/3/07
Maximum Temperature for the week 30.8C (87F) on Fri.
Minimum Temperature for the week 7.5C (45F) on Wed.
Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.
A much cooler week this week. As I said last week it is beginning to feel like Autumn here in the Barossa. We have not finished with the hot weather yet, another couple of hot days are forecast for us in the next few days. However we are now starting to get much cooler night time temperatures.
This week in the vineyard:
With the cooler weather we have seen a significant reduction in the pace of sugar accumulation in our grapes. In fact the baumes in some blocks have hardly moved in the last 2 weeks. As a result we have not had much picking to do this week. We picked our Cabernet block for Yalumba and Shiraz and Sangiovese for Mad Dog this week. Because of the very low yields we are getting this year, the 2007 Mad Dog will be even harder to get hold of than it usually is. We only picked 3 tonnes of Shiraz (about 50% of what we normally do) and our Sangiovese trial (250 vines) only yielded 480kg, compared to 1 1/2 tonnes last year. The Sangiovese will make a very interesting wine this vintage, it did not grow at all like Sangiovese normally grows. It usually makes large tightly packed bunches with quite large berries - this year we have very small berries (good skin to volume ratios - so should be good colour) with open, fairly small loosely packed bunches and much lower yields per vine than normal. We are getting very close to the end of our vintage now with about 90% of our harvest finished. In fact the only block we have still to be booked is our Grenache, hopefully I will be given a pick on that this coming week. It looks like we will be finished picking everything in about 2 more weeks. This week's picture is of a bunch of Grenache waiting to be ripe enough to be picked.
Maximum Temperature for the week 30.8C (87F) on Fri.
Minimum Temperature for the week 7.5C (45F) on Wed.
Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.
A much cooler week this week. As I said last week it is beginning to feel like Autumn here in the Barossa. We have not finished with the hot weather yet, another couple of hot days are forecast for us in the next few days. However we are now starting to get much cooler night time temperatures.
This week in the vineyard:
With the cooler weather we have seen a significant reduction in the pace of sugar accumulation in our grapes. In fact the baumes in some blocks have hardly moved in the last 2 weeks. As a result we have not had much picking to do this week. We picked our Cabernet block for Yalumba and Shiraz and Sangiovese for Mad Dog this week. Because of the very low yields we are getting this year, the 2007 Mad Dog will be even harder to get hold of than it usually is. We only picked 3 tonnes of Shiraz (about 50% of what we normally do) and our Sangiovese trial (250 vines) only yielded 480kg, compared to 1 1/2 tonnes last year. The Sangiovese will make a very interesting wine this vintage, it did not grow at all like Sangiovese normally grows. It usually makes large tightly packed bunches with quite large berries - this year we have very small berries (good skin to volume ratios - so should be good colour) with open, fairly small loosely packed bunches and much lower yields per vine than normal. We are getting very close to the end of our vintage now with about 90% of our harvest finished. In fact the only block we have still to be booked is our Grenache, hopefully I will be given a pick on that this coming week. It looks like we will be finished picking everything in about 2 more weeks. This week's picture is of a bunch of Grenache waiting to be ripe enough to be picked.
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