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2010 vintage report for Riverina (New South Wales)

Supplied by the Wine Grapes Marketing Board
Growing season: The 2009-10 growing season began with a frost very early in the season. The symptoms of frost damage were most pronounced in the lower lying parts of Griffith. This damage pales in comparison to the damage experienced by a series of hailstorms across the Riverina in late November and early December, with many parts of the area experiencing widespread losses from the storm damage. The region also experienced heatwave events, which caused poor fruitset earlier in the season and impacted on colour development in some red winegrape varieties.
Vintage: Vintage 2010 started very early as a result of the light crops being carried by most varieties across the region. This early start meant January was busy as growers, harvesters and wineries needed to manage the processing of large volumes of multiple varieties in a short period of time. This mayhem was brought to an abrupt halt when heavy rains were experienced across the region in early February. Growers who still had fruit on the vine had the delicate job of trying to ward off disease and pest infestations in ripe crops, as well as carefully negotiating delivery times to align with spray withholding periods. Inevitably, some crops did develop bunch rots, as the season continued to have ideal conditions for mould growth. Growers who were on the spot market as a result of winery intake adjustments had the extra urgency of finding a winery for their grapes. Due to sharp price reductions, some opportunistic producers emerged and took advantage of the low-priced fruit and entered into the domestic bulk wine market. This resulted in most sound fruit being harvested, though it was not financially viable for the producer and is not ideal for regional and industry prosperity to continue in this direction. The season also featured the earliest ever botrytis harvest with most fruit crushed by late March/early April, which is far earlier than the typical May/June botrytis harvest.
Yields and quality: The total crush for 2010 is 262,467t, which is down 45,000t on the 2009 crush. Most varieties yielded less by 15-20%. This decline has been caused by viticultural reasons as described in the previous section as well as capped tonnes being enforced by wineries and growers refusing to deliver quality fruit below the cost of production. The regional average yield was slightly greater than 12t/ha (this figure accounts for the winegrapes that were not sold). Overall, the fruit quality from this vintage has produced good quality wines.