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).