The region’s vineyards have faced a very different summer from what they expected. Photo: Canberra District Wine.
It wasn’t the season Canberra winegrowers had expected after the wet La Niña years.
With an El Niño declared, they had prepared for a long, hot, dry summer, not storm-laden skies and humidity.
John Collingwood from Four Winds Vineyard at Murrumbateman said that caught some off guard. Instead of deploying irrigation equipment, winegrowers now needed to make sure their tractors and spray units were up to scratch to keep the threat of fungal disease at bay.
The fickle weather dealt Four Winds and a few others a blow early in the season when frost took out a lot of their crop.
Then it got hot and out came the irrigation, only for the clouds to roll in, including hail on Christmas Day, and the rain to set in, portending an entirely different kind of season.
That still hangs in the balance, along with the style of vintage.
“The extra rain has just put a bit of extra pressure on fungal infections through the vines,” Mr Collingwood said. “That will probably only show up in the next couple of weeks.”
Mr Collingwood said at this point, a combination of spraying and canopy and ground management to help the vineyard improve airflow and dry out should be enough to get through to harvest.
“As long as people have kept their routine fungicide sprays up, it shouldn’t be an issue,” he said
But if the wet and humidity continued through the rest of summer and into autumn, there was the risk of the berries splitting, as well as botrytis or grey mould on the fruit.
“You get this sugary solution grape juice and fungus loves it,” Mr Collingwood said.
That is the worst case, and the region is far from that, with the amount of rain so far nothing like that in the La Niña years and varying quite markedly across the region.
The summer could still dry out and turn up the heat, but a milder season is the preferred outcome. That would allow a more staggered ripening instead of a compressed finish and a mad rush to harvest fruit all at once.
It would also mean a kinder vintage that the cool climate wineries are noted for instead of the intense, full-bodied flavours forged in the heat.
“If it tracks along like this, it will be more of a mild, medium-bodied style year, which is not necessarily a bad thing,” said Mr Collingwood.
The ideal forecast would be not too much rain, mild temperatures and a typical Canberra autumn.
Let’s drink to that.
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