This week: 14th. December

Weather Report Week Ending 14/12/07
Maximum Temperature for the week 36.0C (97F) on Fri. 4 readings above our monthly average of 27.1C.

Minimum Temperature for the week 5.5C (42F) on Mon. 2 readings above our monthly average of 12.3C.

Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rain.

Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Yet another very nice summer week. A couple of quite warm days at the end of the week. Still no rain recorded.

This week in the vineyard:

This week I have been doing some more mowing, as we will need to start spraying some of the summer weeds that are coming up all over the place. We are having particular challenges with a weed called caltrop, an amazing weed that I think will eventually take over the world (if we can't find some easy way to control it). It grows really fast after just a small amount of summer rainfall, to get it germinating. It sets seeds within a couple of weeks of germination and each mature plant can get 100's if not 1000's of seeds on it. So I am going to have to spray weeds again shortly to control the plants that are out there now, but if we get more rain in the next few weeks there will be another flush of weeds germinate.

The photo this week shows some of our Shiraz, we are expecting to see the first signs of verasion shortly. As you can see there is no sign yet of any colour change yet. Last year we started picking on the 23rd of Jan. this was the earliest start to vintage ever (by nearly a week), I am expecting this coming vintage to be quite early too, but hopefully not as early as last year.