Three Wishes Vineyard

2008..the year that could have been a perfect Tassie vintage ! What do you get when you combine an unseasonal, record prolonged heatwave at the end of vintage, with a sudden antarctic jet stream cold snap..highland snow, near frost and then a week later a hurricane (180km winds) ? Im not sure just yet, but the tale will unfold when our Rielsing finishes its ferment in a few weeks..nearly one month later than last year ! Luckily for Three Wishes, it looks like our french friends Chardonnay and Pinot, picked on the last two days of the heatwave prior to Easter (late march), is our best and most bountiful fruit yet ! But not their German neighbours next door...caught by General Winter again ! Poor old Rielsing the late ripener, always left to fend for itself when the winter blues start their tunes ! I was told by a wine merchant in Melbourne about a vineyard in the Coonawarra which jumped 6 % alcohol (6 be in sugar) in just 10 days during Adelaides record heatwave in march this year…

Apparently the final juice was 20be (degrees alcohol) and had to be given the hose treatment prior to ferment to get it back to an acceptable 15%..! If this is true..well Tassie went the other way !! Large crops of grapes on the vine in late march didnt take too well to the heatwave..Tassie didnt quite cop the same intensity of heat but Three Wishes clocked up a few in the old centrury and one controversial measurement of 38C ! This all one week prior to harvest, just when vines were shedding leaf and grapes are especially prone to Sun damage… We wipped our chard and Pinot of in two days, back to back picks, and they both look superb, but the Riesling seemed to just shut down ..Not two weeks prior my winemaker confirmed what I had already though..the Rielsing block looked superb, healthy canopy and disease free fruit..almost bankable ! I did a quick phone around and it seems other vineyards in the Tamar had the same trouble in the weeks following EAster through to mid may. The sugar levels just didnt seem to move at all..normally we can count on one Be per week..but we got one in 3 weeks ! Why ? Probably better left to someone more qualified than myself..but I think the vines went into survival mode with the cold snap (after such a stressfull two weeks of hot weather), heavy leaf senesence, saving their sugars for vegetative growth (trunk, canes, leaves) rather than for future drinkers ! Anyway well see...A quick few words of summary for 2008 : Uneventful spring this year (no severe frosts like 2007 or Western front style rains and mud as in 2006 !), calm flowering (hence good crop levels), some disease pressure in december leading to a small powdery Mildew outbreak that was nipped in the bud (pardon the pun !), and a slow steady, dry summer ripening period from late january until late march..when it started going haywire...last highlight WASPS !! Everywhere, we lost 30% plus of our Rielsing this year to the nasty little turds..ah yes, they are all gods creatures (?). The long wait, big nest numbers, throw in wild bees and possums...and whats left is for you and me !

Understandably its going to be different challenges every year...just hang in there for the ride and roll with the punches (and it gives me different tangible things to reflect on when Im drinking the profits in future years ! )
Adios AMigos Peter