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2004 vintage report for Tasmania

To keep the Danish royal wedding celebrations going, 2004 rolled in a good vintage for Tasmanian sparkling wine. The cooler season allowed sparkling fruit to retain higher acid levels and the earlier picking times allowed this fruit to be generally clean. Harvest date was reported as two to six weeks later than last year, depending on fruit load.

Vintage overall was long and large with temperature conditions conducive to classic cool climate wine styles. Harvest began in mid March with sparkling base wines and late March for heavily thinned early varieties. Fruit was still arriving at the winery well into June. It was a hard year for botrytis. Much of the season was dry but rain events occurred at important times for botrytis control in some vineyards. Lightbrown apple moth control using pheromones appeared less effective, perhaps a result of cool conditions decreasing volatility of the pheromone. Coverage is a perennial issue that was evident as disease incidence on only one side of the bunch in some vineyards, especially lyre trellis. Tight bunches allowed botrytis to hide inside, especially around the pedicel. Having said this, some vineyards were relatively free of disease meaning there are some good lessons to learn.

Attentive canopy management and timely irrigation will also be well rewarded with quality this year. The cool weather with the dry led some vineyards to miss the onset of mid season water stress. There is now a renewed interest in Tasmania in physiological measures of plant water status.

It was a season of great fruitfulness and generally great set. Many vineyards required second and third passes at thinning to achieve 50% reductions in fruit load. Those vineyards that succeeded in this will be rewarded with quality. Juice yields were also higher at around 750 litres per tonne and sometimes above due to this great fruitset. There were some issues managing winery capacity.

It was a season with some scattered mild frost issues in October but generally another year with no region wide damaging spring frosts. A vintage frost affected the Tea Tree area on 5 April. Very strong winds damaged nets on 1 April, and again on 23 and 24 April.

August was wet with a warm spell as buds were swelling (and inflorescences developing). September was cold, wet and windy but very sunny. October was dry and cold. The dry continued through November, which had a few warm days, into a warmer than usual December for a strong fruitset. January was slightly cool but very wet. February was slightly cool with some wet areas but dry in the Tamar and Coal Valley. March was cool with little rainfall. What rain did fall was associated with two events on 6 and 29 March. April was cool with rainfall higher than normal on the east coast and in the south east. May was generally cooler and drier than normal with three windy periods.

Pinot Noir will be a mixed bag. Some well-managed vineyards with balanced cropping levels will produce wines proud among the best of Tasmanis’s benchmarks. The first wines will be made from Pinot Noir clone 777 in Tasmania this year. This clone was first certified in France in 1981. Industry capacity in vine improvement is building in Tasmania. Hopefully this 23-year lead-time can be reduced for future introductions. Although early year crops provide only a limited indication of the long-term potential of a Pinot Noir vineyard, this fruit was considered the best to arrive at the wineries where it was processed.