The 2009 winter was similar to that of 2008 where the rainfall started early July and continued well into spring. We had 200mm less rain than in 2008, but this was still 600mm more than the average of 400mm. Once again this ensured a saturated water table and dams were still overflowing by end October/middle November. The vines had efficient cold units needed for dormancy (some heavy snowfalls) and this lead to an even budburst.
The early cultivars started with budburst on the 12th of September. The later cold and wet conditions postponed budburst by up to 10 days. Budburst was not out of sequence as it was last year. Chardonnay and Pinotage were the first 2 cultivars to burst their buds. Because of the saturated water table and occasional downpours, we did not have to do any additional irrigation until after flowering. Cooler conditions prevailed during most of spring 2009. Rain and strong winds during flowering of the later varieties caused some mildew problems within the bunches. This happened only in some lower lying areas on the farm.
Bigger canopies meant more labour hours spent in the vineyards in getting the right amount of filtered sunlight onto the bunches for the development of fruit, colour and tannin ripening – in other words to eliminate green vegetative characters in wine. We started to take out leaves already at pea-size, which occurred late November/ beginning December, opposed to early to mid November in warmer years. We had a relatively cool December with some light rainfall, which wasn’t that big a problem because of the drying effect of the strong south-easterly winds. We had some welcome rain in mid January just to cool things off and this dragged out the wait for the 2010 harvest.
Eventually night harvesting got under way on the 25 January with Pinotage. We all thought that the early varieties would ripen later and the later varieties earlier, but this wasn’t completely the case. The middle to late-middle ripening varieties like Chenin Blanc and Semillon were also picked later. Although our Shiraz’s and Cabs also ripened later than the norm, they all had to be picked in a space of 7 days. This was because of the heat wave the Cape wine lands experienced at the end of February and first week March. Luckily 90% of our grapes had been harvested by then.
Overall the 2010 vintage was definitely above average. But time will tell when the wines are released. I believe the wines will have exceptional depth, complexity, fullness and ageing potential.