Winery and Vineyard Update Sept 2025

Vintage 2025 wrap from Jules

Vintage 2025 feels like a long time ago! It was the earliest to both start and finish on record. The speedy season was driven by warm, dry conditions and low yields following late-season frosts in spring 2024. With sugars climbing rapidly during ripening, we had to jump in and start harvest early as there was no relief in sight.

In fact, we had to wait until June for rain! Our Chardonnay and Riesling, albeit with small yields came more than a week earlier than 2024. The Riesling is sitting in tank on lees and the Chardonnay in barrel. The wines in a word are smart, not overly aromatic but with a great focus.

As for our reds, we expected a solid tannin structure thanks to the dry vintage resulting small berries, however what has truly surprised us is the aromatic profile. The fruit characteristics are fresh, vibrant, and powerfully expressive.

Now, as we blend our 2025 GSM, it’s the perfect moment to finally reflect on the season. The blend is looking very promising and will now rest in tulips to mature and come together.

Mataro has emerged as a real standout this year, rich in spice and depth. Being a later-ripening and hardy variety, it has thrived in the dry conditions. Our old vine Greenock Grenache, aka Wellington, is delicious, juicy and vibrant with snappy tannins and a lovely savoury line on the palate.

Our Shiraz blocks have each shown distinct personalities. On the whole, Greenock Shiraz delivers the more obvious forward fruit characters with a firm tannin hit, while our Nuriootpa Shiraz is seamless with deeper tannins, and more complexity.

The old vines in Nuriootpa carried only a light crop this year, and the resulting wines show great vitality, with the vines remaining healthy to full berry ripeness despite the dry conditions.

Mengler Hill, the newest addition to our vineyard family, continues to impress. From Riesling with pinpoint focus and drive, to Shiraz that naturally balances fruit, acid, and tannin. Our Mengler Grenache, named Winifred, is showing great promise. Though still a little shy, its tannin structure is already commanding attention and will be a great second release of this wine.

Overall, the 2025 wines are developing beautifully. They’ll need time to settle and come together, but with plenty of highlights, we’re genuinely excited about what lies ahead.

In the vineyard with Conrad

Off the back of a dry year, with meagre rain forecast for early winter, we came into planning for next year expecting more of the same. The storms and rain we have had recently have somewhat tempered that outlook and we can see reasonable long-term forecasts through spring.

Regardless of weather, we always strive to keep back enough irrigation water to fill the soil profile of our old premium vines. With winter rainfall being much less reliable nowadays, irrigating in winter allows the vines to start the season with good water availability - the old vines are exceptional at rationing this out across the growing season, so give us a very efficient use of our most precious resource.

Pruning is now well underway with Mengler Hill and Greenock just finished. We are asking much less of the vines by pruning to fewer buds than typical. Taking a little less than they can achieve each year allows vine reserves build up which helps even out cooler or drier years.

The calm of winter is nearly over now and the beautiful sunny days of late winter inevitably foretell the coming of budburst and the excitement of another season.

As we head into spring, our work shifts from long term projects into prepping the vineyards for budburst, so the next few weeks we focus on managing mid-row and undervine growth to minimize water loss and competition.