Influenced by southern Australia’s coolest February in over 25 years, the start of Vintage 2017 in Tassie was generally delayed by about 3 weeks. Due to its maritime location overlooking Maria Island and Marion Bay, our vineyard at Bream Creek is cooler than the majority of Tassie vineyards and our grapes take longer to ripen – hence Vintage 2017 for us started only recently, when we picked Chardonnay from D Block (planted in the early 1990’s). Our picking is all done by hand so we have that final opportunity to hand select bunches to maintain our highest quality. I’ll be in touch later with a report on Vintage 2017 – but it seems clear so far that yields will be slightly down for some varieties and up for others. There are some amazing flavours out there and delightfully “soft” acidity as a result of the very long cool and quite dry summer and autumn. Cheers, Fred
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