harvest 2013 - the details

picking the Bacchus

Now all the grapes are in the winery, pressed and mostly fermented it is time to reflect on the last season.

2013 has been a year of its own difficulties, a cold late spring delayed bud-burst, followed by a hot dry mid summer and the wettest and least sunny autumn we have recorded over the last 4 years. 

The good stuff: the grapes kept disease-free and amazingly the birds showed no interest in eating them, allowing us the luxury of leaving the fruit longer on the vines without risk of harm. This was just as well because they ripened very late and slowly in the damp and cloudy October. Picking started a week later than normal and finished on the 6th November - at least a week later than we have been used to. Many, many thanks to all those who came out to help picking; it doesn't really need saying that we couldn't do it without your help!

Ortega grapes ready to go to the winery

Sugar levels are a little lower than we achieve in the hotter years and acids maybe a little higher, however the wines taste balanced and full flavoured. In the end as the wines come through fermentation, we are seeing some beautiful delicate aromas and full length of interesting fruit characters. Overall the 2013 wines are showing a lot of promise at this stage.

The storm at the end of October did cause a few problems in that our electricity was disrupted for 2 days and we had to press grapes and work through the night by torch and candle light. Luckily we have a generator that can power the winery machinery (but not the lighting) so we could continue picking through the power cut. Even after 20 years of making wine, this was the first time I have had to work in the dark.

winery at night by torchlight ....

.... and by candle-light

The yield from the vineyard didn't quite match 2006 or 2010, but was very close to our best years and due to the 2007 planted vines coming into full production, the volume of wine from this year is a significant improvement on previous years.

As usual we have made the dry white wines without any winery additives - no yeast, sulphur dioxide, enzymes or fining agents. The press that we installed 3 years ago has allowed us to press the grapes very slowly and gently to maximise flavours.

I expect to produce a Horsmonden dry white wine, two different sparkling wine blends (a Blanc de blancs and our Limney Estate blend) and for the first time in many years we are making a small amount of Rose wine from our Pinot Noir grapes at Diamond Field.