Friday 4 May 2012

Stefano Lubiana End of Vintage Report 2012

Stefano Lubiana End of Vintage Report 2012


Diary note for May 3rd, 2012

The skies over Granton may have been dull and grey today, but our hillside vineyard is ablaze with colour at the moment, with the gold and russet tones of dying leaf canopies. It’s a signal that not only has autumn finally arrived in our part of the world, so too has the end of vintage, the 20th that Steve and Monique have completed on their property since they moved from South Australia to Tasmania in 1990.

It’s hard to believe it was seven weeks back that vineyard manager Mark Hoey and his trusty side-kicks James and Jamie began lifting nets for the first pick of the season from our small, family-owned vineyard on the outskirts of Hobart.

Our crop that March day amounted to a touch over 6 tonnes of Chardonnay, and just a few hundred kilos of Pinot Meunier, all for sparkling wine production. It set the scene for the events what would play out during the remaining harvest period. This has been a year of fabulous fruit quality, but one that pulled up short in volume… by around 30-35% of our usual vintage crush, depending on variety.

Small bunch and berry sizes have been the cause of 2012’s drastic crop reduction. And in the case of our Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, there have been far fewer bunches than normal as well.

The colours, aromas and flavours of our newborn wines have been a joy to behold. It’s too bad our loyal customers will have limited access to them as bottles of these 2012s find their way onto wine shelves and dining tables around the country in coming years.

Blame the weather is the stock standard response you get when you ask producers right across southern Tasmania for reasons behind the vintage’s lower bunch numbers and bunch weights. But it’s hard to believe that 15 days of light rain totalling no more than 50mm for the whole month of November could have caused such disruption to flowering and fruit set. That’s farming for you!

Curiously enough, at the opposite end of the season, we had fabulous weather across our 25ha Derwent Valley site. According to the weather bods at the Bureau of Meteorology, nearby Hobart enjoyed a record warm spell during April, experiencing six days of 24ºC or better, and an average temperature for the month that was just 0.1ºC off the highest ever recorded since data collection began back in the 1890s. Whoa!

Rainfall for the month was also way down, around 40% of normal in Hobart, and just a couple of drips less than 20mm on our property above the river. Humidity levels were also pretty modest during April. All that explains why the little bit of Sauvignon Blanc we brought in a couple of days ago was as clean as a whistle and totally devoid of the botrytis we were seeking for the creation of our first sticky.

Ironic, isn’t it? As biodynamic winegrowers, we spend the whole season walking a tightrope, tempting fate and the dire consequences of disease, with no thoughts at all for the safety net of a bunch of chemicals to fall back on if things go pear-shaped. Then when we dance a little longer on the wire than necessary, willing Nature to deliver us all of the good and the evil of ‘noble rot,’ our attempts once again defy logic.

One thing that is really evident right now is how quiet the winery has become over the past few days. All our Pinot Noir and Merlot ferments have finished and the wines sent to barrel. Our whites too have gently bubbled their way through ferment, and are resting safe and sound, either in tank or barrel. Practically everything in sight has been washed down and set to one side, ready for use once again whenever the time is right next year.

We can’t believe our good fortune in having such a fantastic work crew on site this vintage. Both the vineyard and the winery ran like well-oiled machines… though there’s no doubt this year’s reduced crops meant picking and processing was much less frenetic than usual.

Winemaker assistants Gavin Robinson and Daniel Schmitt packed their kit a day or so ago and have gone off touring the State before they leave for homes in Canada and Germany, respectively. Tyler Eck has just a few more days’ work in the barrel hall and he too will be on his way, Stateside eventually, as they say.

Still, there’s plenty of jobs left for the rest of us to carry out. The biggest of them all is being undertaken by Steve, who’s worked like a Trojan in recent months to ensure everything is in readiness for the big construction program that will play out here over the remainder of 2012. A new underground barrel hall and sparkling wine cave; a new cellar door tasting room and 40-seat restaurant; a new biodynamic interpretive centre… they all seem so do-able on paper. We’re now about to see if that turns out to be the case.

An overseas vintage would be par for the course for Steve in any other year, but somehow we have a feeling that this September things might be a little too busy on home turf to allow for that. We shall see. It’s not all beer and skittles – or Pinot and skittles – this winemaking lark.

PS We’ve posted dozens of photos of vintage 2012 on our Flickr pages. You’ll find them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefano_lubiana_wines/

  
Mark Smith




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