After 3 vintages of torture the 2010 vintage saw McLaren Vale return to the way things used to be. A vintage of even temperatures, a useful few splashes of rain, no extremes.

Picking started a week or two earlier than it used to but our crops are a tonne or two per acre less than they used to be.

We got underway on February 12, picking Chardonnay and from then on vintage just kept ticking along in a very orderly fashion through to our last pick, which was Tempranillo, in the last week of March.

This year we had five seperate Shiraz ferments with different clones, different rootstocks and different yeast cultures. The result is a very interesting array of flavours which down the track will be blended to create a couple of delightfully complex wines.
With the Cabernet Sauvignon we did a similar thing but only 3 ferments.

Our vintage was made more the entertaining by the recruitment of two sommelier students from Sweden. Neither had worked in a winery before but you would have been hard pressed to pick that by the end of their first two weeks.. They arrived from Stockholm at 4pm, were on a harvester at 2.00am that night and just kept going from there. When they finally left for home they had gained a lot of skills, knowledge and a delightful deep purple skin toning.
Winemaker James Hastwell had the most enjoyable of vintages.

In summary this was our biggest ever vintage and we now have in tank or wood Chardonnay, Viognier, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz and Tempranillo.