It's actually quite amazing when you think of the tightrope that viticulturists around the world have to tread. It's an extremely fine balancing act with Mother nature on one side and the techniques of the vine grower on the other. Green harvesting, leaf pruning, canopy management, debudding, vine density, not to mention the uncontrollables such as the weather. It's an extensive list. Get it right and you can start to change the fundamental building blocks of the grapes you crush; ripe phenolics, low sugars, and correspondingly low alcohols....get it wrong and the grapes natural development can become badly skewed with ripeness, sugar levels and flavour developments all arriving at different times....Steve James gives us the third installment on their Margaret River harvest, where it would seem Voyager's building blocks are falling into place.
"Thursday 4th March 2010
A lot has happened in the past week - due mainly to the consistently warm to hot weather that the Margaret River region has experienced. Temperatures in the low thirty degrees Celsius with mild evenings has seen the grapes ripen very quickly. As mentioned in the last report, the flavours have been coming in at low sugar levels, so it has been critical to spend a lot of time in the vineyard tasting fruit and, not worrying too much about the technical analysis.
A lot has happened in the past week - due mainly to the consistently warm to hot weather that the Margaret River region has experienced. Temperatures in the low thirty degrees Celsius with mild evenings has seen the grapes ripen very quickly. As mentioned in the last report, the flavours have been coming in at low sugar levels, so it has been critical to spend a lot of time in the vineyard tasting fruit and, not worrying too much about the technical analysis.
The past week has seen the completion of our Chardonnay intake and, most of our Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon harvested. Our final pick of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon is tomorrow night and, that signals the end of the whites except for a small volume of Chenin Blanc and an even smaller component of Viognier which will be harvested to co-ferment with our first block of Shiraz.
Overall quality looks outstanding, with pristine clean fruit and bright vibrant flavours in the profiles we look for. Chardonnay looks exceptionally good and the barrel fermentations are ticking along beautifully.
We are currently enjoying a cooler spell of weather , however with warming conditions forecast from the weekend on, the reds will not be far away. Early indications are for a potentially exceptional red year with, early flavour development and tannin ripeness looking very impressive. I expect by late next week we will be thinking about our first harvest of Shiraz for the vintage. Hopefully the season will allow us to harvest some reds at lower sugar levels with ripe flavours and tannins - a goal we have been working towards with our viticulture for a few years now.
At this stage it is looking like a very compressed vintage with parallels to the 2001 and 2007 seasons, where vintage was mostly completed by the end of March. "
