This week: 8th. Dec.

Weather Report Week Ending 8/12/06

Maximum Temperature for the week 38.8C (102F) on Fri.
Minimum Temperature for the week 4.1C (39F) on Sun.
Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Another typical summer week here in the Barossa. No rain and warm to hot conditions all week. Not much else to say this week - no signs of verasion yet.

This week in the vineyard:
Well I passed our quality assurance audit this week without any trouble. We have been continuing to put growguards on our grafted Sauv. Blanc. The photo shows some of these tubes on the vines. We have had them made small enough so that they will not flap in the wind. They also do not go all the way to the ground, we have done this to encourage air flow so the vines will not get too hot. To our knowledge no one else has tried this in grafted vines, I will keep you up to date on how it all goes. We are starting to think about timing of fungicide sprays now, to avoid withholding periods, depending on rain in the next week or so, we may only put our next spray out between Christmas and new year. If we can do this that would probably be our last spay this vintage.

This week: 1st. Dec.

Weather Report Week Ending 1/12/06

Maximum Temperature for the week 39.0C (102F) on Thur.
Minimum Temperature for the week 10.8C (51F) on Wed.
Rainfall for the Week 0.2mm (1 point) 1 day of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.


Another hot dry week here in the Barossa Valley. We have now given most of our vineyard a drink. It is just so very dry this year, we don't normally start watering before Christmas. I have been going through some of the weather data for the Barossa, we are currently 165mm (472 points) of rainfall below our average to the end of November. November is the month that new wood is initiated for the next growing season - high temperatures help initiate more shoots, after a cool start to Nov. we finished the month 2.4c warmer than the average. I don't know what impact this will have on next growing season, as the frost we suffered will reduce some fruitfulness. A lot depends on our winter rainfall. But enough about next season, let's get this one in first. Here are some predictions for this vintage in the Barossa - we will have major reductions in tonnes picked overall across most varieties. Probably no grapes left unpicked on any Barossa vines this year. I would expect most older Shiraz will be well down on crop, so quality could be quite good. Whites will also suffer a little from sunburn as canopies are quite small with more fruit exposure than we would like to see. We have tried to combat this problem in our vineyard by adding catch wires to a lot of our Riesling and Sauv. Blanc. this year.

This week in the vineyard:
We continue to spot spray summer weeds. We are about to start a trial of some growguards to protect from wind damage the Sav. Blanc we topgrafted last month . We have had some growguards made this week and will be putting them out this week, I'll include a photo next week. I have also spent time this week getting ready for a quality assurance audit that we need to undertake every second year, I will let you know if we passed next week (not really expecting any problems).

This week: 24th. Nov.

Weather Report Week Ending 24/11/06
Maximum Temperature for the week 37.7C (100F) on Mon.
Minimum Temperature for the week 7.5C (45F) on Thur.
Rainfall for the Week 1.0mm (3 points) 2 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Well a week is a long time in the vineyard. The rain of last week seems like just a distant memory. We have had a very hot week this week, with very low humidity's (as low as 1% for a couple of hours on Mon.). Our soil moistures are still quite good, however they fall very fast in conditions like this.

This week in the vineyard:

We have been out spot spraying summer weeds as they germinate. We have also started to skirt some of our more sprawling varieties (Riesling, Chardonnay and Shiraz mostly), this promotes air movement through the canopies and reduces our risk of disease. The photo this week shows one of our 90 year old Shiraz vines that provide fruit for our Mad Dog Shiraz.

This week: 17th. Nov.

Weather Report Week Ending 17/11/06
Maximum Temperature for the week 31.7C (88F) on Sat.
Minimum Temperature for the week 3.3C (38F) on Tue.
Rainfall for the Week 21.6mm (62 points) 5 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

At last a good downpour of rain. We recorded 17mm of rain on Sunday, it rained for more than 7 hours, we had virtually no run off. It will help our frost affected vines to recover, we had new growing tips showing less than 2 days after the rain. It would be really nice to get another fall like this one in the next couple of weeks.

This week in the vineyard:
All of our vines have now finished flowering. Because of the rain we have been out spraying fungicide to prevent downy & powdery mildew. Next week we will have summer weeds germinating, which will need to be dealt with. This week's photo is of a Chardonnay bunch nearly at bunch closure, already!

This week: 10th. Nov.

Weather Report Week Ending 10/11/06
Maximum Temperature for the week 28.0C (82F) on Fri.
Minimum Temperature for the week 5.2C (41F) on Fri.
Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

No rain again this week. As you can see from the photo above the Barossa ranges have now taken on their Summer browns. Quite good flowering conditions this week - a very cool set of temperatures this week, only Thurs. and Fri. max temps being above average (this may have an impact on fruit initiation for next year). The only down side to flowering has been a couple of nights of very strong gully winds, this might have had implications for our fruit set on some varieties.

This week in the vineyard:
We continue to summer prune watershoots. This week we took petiols (leaf stems) from some of our blocks for analysis at a lab. to check on our vineyards nutritional health. The picture shows the block of Sauv. Blanc we topgrafted last week.

More about our wine.

James Halliday Australian Wine Companion 2007 Edition
Winery Rating 4.5 Stars: "Excellent Producer of very high quality wines.
'2004 Mad Dog Shiraz: Good colour, a complex array of leather, spice, licourice and blackberry aromas and flavours; while powerful, is nimble on its feet. 93 Points.'

Sunday Times Magazine Top 100, November 2005

"Mad Dog Munzberg is a third generation Barossa grapegrower and this is produced by the fourth generation: powerful, unctuous, ripe and seductive"
Peter Forrestal

"From a top vintage. Opulently rich, with spice and mulberries, it's a joy to drink."Rating: 91/100
Ken Gargett, Brisbane Courier Mail, November 26th 2005

"Mad Dog is a project that draws together two couples and one of their fathers who happens to be a grower in the Barossa Valley. There's plenty of industry experience between them and they have advantageously put it all to good use in this modern juicy fruit bomb. Really pure and lifted black fruits on the nose, the wine has an ethereal, fragrant side, underscored with eastern spice, liquorice and pain grilli. It verges on ethereal and impresses with vibrancy and impact. The oak is more than fully met by the fruit. Look out for redskin raspberry flavour on the palate that opens out to deeper dark chocolate and toasty oak char. The middle fills out nicely with fleshy curtains of fruit and fine dense tannins working away in good balance. For all the verve and vivaciousness, the finish winds up pleasingly savoury, slightly chewy and the plum-cake flavour lasts well over a minute. It will build and integrate in bottle with a year or two." 92+ points
Nick Stock, Adelaide Review, 14th October 2005

This week: 3rd. Nov.

Weather Report Week Ending 3/11/06

Maximum Temperature for the week 27.7C (82F) on Wed.
Minimum Temperature for the week 1.4C (34F) on Sat.
Rainfall for the Week 0.6mm (1.5 points) 2 days of rain.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Just a hint of rain this week - not enough to even settle the dust, certainly not enough to be useable by the vines. No further frost this week, although being full moon we are not out of the woods yet! Chardonnay is virtually finished flowering, all other varieties are flowering this week. The mild weather this week should aid a good fruit set. Looks like another good week coming up (weather wise) for good fruit set. This last month we set another new record here in the Barossa Valley, this was the first Oct. in more than 50 years of records that no rain was recorded. The drought continues to worsen!

This week in the vineyard:

We have had a grafting team here top grafting a block of Shiraz and Cabernet over to Sauvinon Blanc. They have finished the whole block in under a week, now we just have to wait for them to shoot. We have also been breaking off water shoots from around the stems of the vines. The photo this week shows our Sauvinion Blanc. in full flower.