Moss Wood 2020 Semillon

Vintage Notes

The famous line, “We’ll all be “rooned”, said Hanrahan”, from “Said Hanrahan”, by John O’Brien, is much quoted by and about Australian farmers.  Looking back on the 2020 vintage, it’s seasons like this that capture why O’Brien wrote the poem and highlight the pitfalls Mother Nature can bestow upon those of us on the land.  We saw them up close and personal this year.

In southeastern Australia, the bushfires were yet another reminder we serve at Mother Nature’s pleasure.  Every now and then she’ll show us that no matter how clever we think we are, she’s really in charge.  The fire and smoke damage, with commensurate loss of crop and property was simply awful.  In some respects, we were fortunate in Margaret River and were able to avoid fire, although that gives us no reason for complacency.  In our heavily wooded region, dangerous bushfires are a genuine threat every summer.  Our challenges were more traditional.

Truth be known, our growing season got off to a good start.  Things had been dry, with rainfall down about 20% but by the end of October, we’d received 769mm of rain, so for viticulture at least, we were not in drought.  We were proceeding quite comfortably until 12.15am on Thursday 24^th October, when we received a very solid hailstorm which lasted for nearly a minute.  For those who are interested in context, if hail lasts for longer than about 10 seconds, it will do significant harm to the vines.  When we investigated afterwards, we found major wounds on shoots, leaves and bunches, right across both Moss Wood and Ribbon Vale.

It’s difficult to estimate exactly what was lost but the 2020 Semillon yield was down 40% at 5.87 tonnes/hectare.  Once we harvested the crop, we could see the hail had impacted both the number and size of the bunches, down 6% and 34%, respectively.

To limit the damage, immediately after the event we sprayed to prevent fungal disease becoming established on all the wounds.  The treatment worked and prevented things getting worse but it didn’t replace what was physically bashed and destroyed by the hail.

After this amusing interlude, things returned to normal.  Semillon flowered during November, enjoying very little rain and only 4 days when the temperature dropped below 8°C.  What remained of the bunches had a chance to set a reasonable crop.

We also enjoyed a warm summer, the first one since 2013.  In the end, Semillon accumulated 1105 hours in the temperature range of 18-28°C, comfortably above the preferred minimum of 1000 hours.  There were some nice hot days along the way and the vines accrued 65 hours above 33°C.  The hottest day of the summer was 4^th February, when the mercury topped out at 38°C.

Most importantly, with a small crop and such excellent ripening conditions, the remaining fruit sprinted through to full maturity.  We harvested the Semillon on 20^th February, 18 days earlier than average.  The days elapsed from flowering to harvest were 96, some 12 days faster than usual and the sugar level reached 14.0° Baume, roughly 10% riper than average.  Needless to say, the 2020 is one of the richest Semillons we’ve made.