SPRING 2008
Well, Spring is with us again – just what did happen to Winter this year?
Apart from some cold weather we haven’t had much winter rain. While the new tanks on the big shed are full, the rainfall intensity has been light and there has been very little run-off. The irrigation dam is only about half full and this is a major challenge for the season ahead. Last year, we found that providing a “minimum” quantity of irrigation water each week without rain worked very well to ensure slow and steady vine growth and development and so would be keen to follow this strategy again, but there isn’t enough water in the dam to do this – so it will be challenging to determine how best to use what we have and be able to string it out over the next seven months.
The first signs of the new season are now upon us, with early morning sunshine and buds swelling on the Chardonnay. So far the Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir haven’t made much of a move in this regard.
Since the end of pruning in mid-August, our vineyard focus has been on preparing the ground for the next season. This has involved lime for soil conditioning and a little calcium and potassium nitrate to give the vines a good start. The other key part of the nutrition strategy will be the program of foliar sprays up to fruit set in late November – early December. We like to include a kelp extract in this which provides the sort of micro-nutrients and trace elements which seem to help in sustaining vine performance in dry times.
As in the past year, we have continued to base soil nutrition on the use of a complex organic fertilizer spread in late June. Fortunately we had enough rain in July to water this in and it should now be well integrated in to the soil structure.
After three difficult years the over-grafted Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris vines and the replanted Pinot Noir vines are expected to finally start to contribute to overall Vineyard performance this year. Pruning these vines was a little challenging as we need to coax them into the productive structure which will serve us well over the long term. So far, so good. In general, the results look promising but the proof of this will become apparent over the next 3-6 months.
Back in the office, there have been some major changes: after four years we have decided to update our label to a present new, modern, high quality image! This received its first public outing at the Wine Industry Tasmania “Roadshow” to Sydney and Brisbane last week - with a universally positive response. This new label will have more “shelf impact” than the previous one and will be applied to the 2007 vintage wines. For a while this year the two labels will be in circulation as we work our way through the stocks for the 2006 vintage wines. Gradually, the new image will work its way into all of our presentational and promotional materials.