2016 Vintage Report: a strange year indeed!
At Lyons Will we have a relatively predictable spring and summer pattern, however, this year was a little unusual…
We started with a super dry winter, not necessarily our coldest winter on record but quite dry, which made things great from a pruning perspective but meant that our dams didn’t get any natural run off for the second year in a row. Our subsoils were now getting pretty parched, meaning that even if the plants wanted to reach down for some moisture they would struggle.
Spring came along with a bang, three weeks early and it was very warm indeed. The vines reacted to this with amazing shoot growth leaving us a little caught out in the shoot thinning department! However we managed and had really great flowering and healthy shoot growth.
Then fire… The Cobaw fires ripped through dangerously close to our house and continued for over ten days, everyone was evacuated and no one had power. Luckily for us we were unscathed and in fact were one of the only properties in our area unaffected. In a strike of pure luck the grass was still very green and no damage to our vineyard occurred. And as the vines were flowering there was no chance of smoke taint.
Summer came on strong but unlike other regions we got the odd spell of rain here and there, which is a lot more than we have had in recent years. Temperatures on the other hand were abnormal and seem to hase fluctuated from very warm to relatively cool. Still the little rain we did receive meant we didn’t have to irrigate that often (if at all) for quite long stints and the vines still looked in good condition.
Veraison came early, which is normally a good indicator that harvest will also come on early. It was so early in fact that we missed our netting window and got severely attacked by the super hungry native birds, whose habitats were severely damaged or destroyed by the earlier fires. According to our estimates we lost nearly 15% of our yield across both Pinot and Chardonnay.
For the third year in a row harvest came early, with Chardonnay being picked on the 9th of March and Pinot on the 14th. Due to bird damage the fruit yields were lower than last year, and we picked just under two tonnes of Chardonnay and 4.5 tonnes of Pinot Noir. The quality of the fruit picked was very good, with the Chardonnay not expressing too many signs of sunburn or raisining and the Pinot Noir producing some beautifully tight bunches.
We expected good colour and great flavours from the skins, seeds and stems and more importantly we were able to bring in the fruit in the morning for processing that afternoon with everything in tank or vats by dinner time.
The numbers:
Total Pinot yield was 1.6 tonnes to the acre, picked at 22.5 brix, a pH of 3.2 and a TA of 6.88 g/L. Chardonnay ended up being just under 1 tonne to the acre, picked at 23 brix, pH of 3.2 and a TA of 7.0 g/L
We started with a super dry winter, not necessarily our coldest winter on record but quite dry, which made things great from a pruning perspective but meant that our dams didn’t get any natural run off for the second year in a row. Our subsoils were now getting pretty parched, meaning that even if the plants wanted to reach down for some moisture they would struggle.
Spring came along with a bang, three weeks early and it was very warm indeed. The vines reacted to this with amazing shoot growth leaving us a little caught out in the shoot thinning department! However we managed and had really great flowering and healthy shoot growth.
Then fire… The Cobaw fires ripped through dangerously close to our house and continued for over ten days, everyone was evacuated and no one had power. Luckily for us we were unscathed and in fact were one of the only properties in our area unaffected. In a strike of pure luck the grass was still very green and no damage to our vineyard occurred. And as the vines were flowering there was no chance of smoke taint.
Summer came on strong but unlike other regions we got the odd spell of rain here and there, which is a lot more than we have had in recent years. Temperatures on the other hand were abnormal and seem to hase fluctuated from very warm to relatively cool. Still the little rain we did receive meant we didn’t have to irrigate that often (if at all) for quite long stints and the vines still looked in good condition.
Veraison came early, which is normally a good indicator that harvest will also come on early. It was so early in fact that we missed our netting window and got severely attacked by the super hungry native birds, whose habitats were severely damaged or destroyed by the earlier fires. According to our estimates we lost nearly 15% of our yield across both Pinot and Chardonnay.
For the third year in a row harvest came early, with Chardonnay being picked on the 9th of March and Pinot on the 14th. Due to bird damage the fruit yields were lower than last year, and we picked just under two tonnes of Chardonnay and 4.5 tonnes of Pinot Noir. The quality of the fruit picked was very good, with the Chardonnay not expressing too many signs of sunburn or raisining and the Pinot Noir producing some beautifully tight bunches.
We expected good colour and great flavours from the skins, seeds and stems and more importantly we were able to bring in the fruit in the morning for processing that afternoon with everything in tank or vats by dinner time.
The numbers:
Total Pinot yield was 1.6 tonnes to the acre, picked at 22.5 brix, a pH of 3.2 and a TA of 6.88 g/L. Chardonnay ended up being just under 1 tonne to the acre, picked at 23 brix, pH of 3.2 and a TA of 7.0 g/L