Three Wishes Vineyard

Wow ! 2009 A viticultural vintage to forget...? Consistent wet windy weather and virtually no fruit set in November, drought and record heat waves during veraison, disease and rain before harvest...could it get any worse ???

Sounds like a good year to run for parliament, spend time with the family, surf, build a yatch, get another job and get active in the community !! Well I Haven’t built the yatch yet, in fact I don’t even know how to sail one, thats this years challenge ..but the rest kept me sane! Its coming up to October now and after the winter we have just been through, If I build it too quickly I fear an ocean breakout from the prisoners Island might be in order....thats if the dreaded Bass Strait doesn’t claim by bones first..anyway back to the Vino…

Three Wishes Vineyard has suffered from poor fruit set in other vintages (see other blogs), partly due to nutrient (micro) deficiency and bad weather, but this year took the cake. I estimated after a wet, windy and miserable flowering period in November that we were looking at less than half the yield of our 08 vintage. In hindsight I was being optimistic ! We ended up with about 30% of our Pinot and Chardonnay, and 60% of our Riesling when all was said and done in April. Recored heat waves (exceeding that of 07 and 08) with temperatures of 43C in the shade during ripening, poor canopy cover due to drought (maybe I need to irrigate this year ?), lots of small and big berries (hen and chicken) prone to shrivelling in the heat, our first proper outbreak of powdery mildew, Europeans wasps and rain just prior to harvest (onto hot barren ground) causing berry splitting and more raisoning of fruit gave me the most challenging viticultural conditions Ive encountered in my short time on the land. Add to this our desire to keep our chemical and water usage to a minimum, and farm along organic practices, and the challenge was that much more intense…

Ho hum...SO HOW IS THE WINE LOOKING ?
Most punters will tell you that lower yields give you better quality wine..right ? Well although this is often the case, the jury is out on my 09’s. Berry shrivel and a higher percentage of stalk/stem in the ferment will be interesting...Heres my honest appraisal for wine in tank/barre-ll :
09 PINOT: Big ! Intense colour and plumb/cherry flavours, earthy but lacking fragrance and “bright fruit” characters (such as are pleasing in the 2008 vintage)..the wine is going through Malo and has along way left to run in oak so too early to judge yet
09Chardonnay: Pleasing fruit in the nectarine/peach spectrum, maybe laking some oak and structure at this early stage...6 more months in oak will help.
09 Riesling : Didn’t suffer as much as the other fruit varieties in the vineyard, typical Three Wishes fruit, phenolics and spiciness..creamy with perhaps with more lemon/lime/citrus than the 08 and 06 Rizza’s.

Ill keep you posted on how the wines are maturing, either way be have bugger all of them and I don’t envisage the pinot and chardonnay will be for sale until 2011 (at a minimum). cheers Pete

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