Colonial Estate 2003
After a mild, almost European, vintage for our first foray ‘Down-under’ in 2002, the 2003 Vintage was an eye-opener, and underlined how far removed we were from the temperate climate of Bordeaux.
A year of extreme drought with soaring heat made the berries look tired. Unfortunately droughts have a nasty habit of ending in floods, as we believe the winemakers of the Barossa Valley experienced in 1983. For two days towards the end of February tumultuous rain hit the Barossa and Eden Valley. Our ‘Gunyah’ Vineyard, with its stony soil and which had already been cropped to under a tonne, reflected berries akin more to raisins than grapes. The effect of the downpour on the vines was one of shock. As the vines scrambled to soak up the sudden moisture the berries split. The weather turned warm, and to avoid rot we picked on the 17th March – exactly a full month before the time that we picked the block in 2002. Anticipating 325 cases from ‘Gunyah’ we managed to scrape 30. The joys of being a Vigneron!
Luckily elsewhere the rain had the effect of calming the grapes and, to avoid anticipated greenness due to high alcohol and phenolicly unripe berries, we picked as late as we could and allowed a level of adjustment once gathered in. By this time the winery at Light Pass was sufficiently completed for the harvest to be taken in there for Exile and Émigré, and we kept on the winery used in 2002 to make the new range being introduced with the 2003 Vintage – The Colonial Estate. This is an exciting development for us. With Company-owned vineyards and selected growers we handpicked the equivalent of 8,000 cases of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Semillon. In all cases these came from old vines in the Barossa and Eden Valleys. The Bordeaux habit of picking into small trays seemed fine last year when we were dealing with smaller volumes, but the increased amount put the pressure on Wayne Linke, our Vineyard Manager.
The slightly higher alcohol levels put their strain on fermentation completing, but, all in all, we feel that we can be extremely happy with the results.