Three Wishes Vineyard

Early vintage woe and peril (frost, bush fires -see previous Blog ) led to a long and drought stricken, but largely uneventful 2007 vintage (we however did have golf ball size hail stones land within a few hundred meters of the vineyard on boxing day, the same storm trashed my uncles garden across the road !). Yields from our 3 hectare vineyard were predictably low at harvest after frost, poor fruit set and no rain during veraison (ripening period), but were on average better than I originally expected.

The final count was 4 tonnes of Pinot, 4 tonnes of Riesling, and 2.5 tonnes of Chardonnay. All things being equal...our vineyard should be yielding double these amounts within the next 4 years (all things being equal….a big statement in Tassie Viticulture !). If our cloud has a silver lining, its that the quality of our fruit was superb. Its an early call, but Id say tasting all three wines will be our best yet ! For a start, our 07 Riesling just won a high silver medal at the Royal Hobart International Wine Show (late November 2007), placing 5th overall in the open class…beating hundreds of other Rieslings, including many of Australia and New Zealand’s best !! You can check out the competition on “catalogue of results” –class 1 (page 1) : http://www.hobartshowground.com.au/wineshow/results.html - Thanks Guy Wagner (our Riesling and Pinot Winemaker) and Go Tassie !!

Im very pleased with the barrel work and ferment techniques on the 2007 Chardonnay by our new Chardonnay wine maker Rebecca Wilson (Chardonnay Queen !  previously head winemaker at Capel Vale Margaret River), and its shaping up to be a very complex, funky wine with plenty of generous fruit on the palate. The 2007 Pinot is looking so good, its probably all going into the Three Wishes Label (same as the 2005 vintage)..sorry Landbridge !!

What makes me proud is this vintage quality has been achieved with a chemical spray program which was virtually organic...we had only one non organic pesticide this 2007 vintage (out of a recommended spray program of dozens of chemicals) and no insecticides...we have 3 years to go to get to 100% organic …although weeds could be our downfall here without some serious mulching or re-sowing of clover…

The key feature of the 2007 vintage for TWV was the fruit looked to be ready to harvest in the first week of march, sending us into a panic! I understand other vineyards were also staring down the barrel of April vintage at such time. TWV have progressively picked earlier each vintage (mid April in 04,first week of April in 05, third week of march in 06) so this wasn’t unexpected, but first week of march would have broken all records for Tassie table wine ! Luckily for us, the vines probably due to extreme water stress, shut down and took an extra month to get over the line..which gave us our two month ripening/veraison time (seems to be the average). This point is an important one to stress...all our past 4 vintages have had approximately 2 months of ripening time, regardless of vintage variation. Without this long ripening period, the wines could fail to achieve their cool climate complexities (I must stress this theory is sometimes contentious !). To give you an idea, wines from very hot climates, can take just a few weeks from veraison (beginning of ripening-water and sugar accumulation in the berries) to vintage.....and these wines are often at the low (read cheap !) end of the flavor and complexity spectrum.

Disease pressure: Other vineyards in the North East Tasmanian region had extreme powdery mildew stress, but apart from a small flare up in the riesling, we remained largely unaffected. We had some early botrytis pressure in the Riesling, but favorable weather and hungry wasps cleaned this up before it could get set !\

Other points of interest -low to medium bird pressure, strong European wasp pressure (but this went in our favor this year as wasps feed on the point of least resistance on the berry skin...so the botrytis mould was the perfect path to some concentrated sugar accumulation !). \par
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2007 Pinot - Picked at around 13.5be (equivalent alcohol level) in the first week of April (note nearly 3 weeks later than 2006), it has similar “red fruit” driven qualities to our 05 pinot, but also some of the earthy, savory characters of the 2006 vintage. With time on good oak, it should develop the luscious spicy qualities of our earlier pinot’s. Bunch size was bigger than 04/05, berries were bigger than 05 on average, but the berries were more fresh (firm) and less raisin (ie dried/shriveled) than in 06

Chardonnay -A good mix of fruit flavors across the block, from citrus to stone fruit. Picked at around 13.2be, this was higher than 05 (12.7) and lower than 06 (14.0be). Early barrel characters are superb, ranging from Peach Melba, nectarine to lemon sherbet and grapefruit. Although at an early stage, this wine is shaping up to be a very “un Tasmanian” chardonnay ! Picked at the end of the first week of April, this was two weeks later than 2006 (and similar to 2005) ! \par
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Riesling - We agonised about picking this fruit early, but decided to “let it hang” longer than previous years. The canopy size was generally smaller than the green and wet 06 vintage, and the crop level was higher...so it was always going to be more of a wait. We picked at 12.5be (versus 13.5 be in 06 and 11.5be in 05) at the beginning of the second week of April (3 weeks later than 2006 !) and the wine appears at this early stage to have more fruit intensity on the palate, but perhaps less aromatic qualities than the 2006 Gold medal winner. Over to you Guy Wagner to get this spruced up for early bottling !!

Please get in touch if you have any questions or would like more information from TWV on this blog.