LOCAL winemakers are celebrating the end of this year’s vintage with the projected lower volume but excellent quality coming to fruition.
Gapsted Estate chief executive officer Andrew Santarossa said the beginning of May brought the official end to the 2024 vintage, with great results across the board.
“There’s even more confidence in the quality of the vintage than when we last spoke in late March,” he told the Alpine Observer and Myrtleford Times on Monday.
“It was really a factor of getting through vintage and being able to assess them more honestly.
“Now that we’ve had a good assessment of the finished ferments, although they’re young, there is an improved confidence in quality.
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“We’ve ended up being 10 per cent down in volume, which is a far better result than last year, and coupled with the fact we have excellent quality it’s a great result."
He said the decrease was due to the patchy start of growing season with a late winter and early spring weather with plenty of rainfall creating an uneven time of year.
“The start of new year had this amazing run of beautiful weather and that’s continued with only one or two rain events that threatened but once we got through them March and April have been perfect to finish off the year," he said.
“It’s still cool but with lovely sunny days allowing us to get those grapes off.”
This year Gapsted took in 4502 tonnes of grapes.
“Ideally we aim for 5000 but that’s a good result for us and as a business it allows continued supplies for the channels we have and it’s really the high quality as an aim for us,” Mr Santarossa said.
“We call the official end to vintage when we press the last of the red, which was last week, so that means everything has not only come into winery but we've also finished fermentation.
“Considering the start of the season and where we’ve got to that timeline was where we were expecting to be.
“Compared to the start of vintage to now, there’s a lot more optimism and positive lights at the end of tunnel.
“I think the wine industry has still got some tough trading for the next 12 months but there’s more positivity and this vintage bodes well.
“Having a good vintage gives us a lot to be proud about and I think we should be focusing on positives rather than negatives affecting the industry.
“Celebrate the wins, and 2024 is a win we can celebrate.”
Over at the Michelini Wines vineyards, winemaker Matthew Kilby said this year was an ideal season for ripening grapes.
"After three wet ripening seasons, following the disastrous fire affected 2020, 2024 finally presented us with an ideal season for ripening grapes," he said.
"A good amount of rain falling in the period before Christmas meant that water reserves in the vineyard were high, with timely rain events throughout the summer tiding us over through the hottest part of the year.
"The heat really kicked in in February as the fruit was entering its ripening stage and this led to an early and compressed season, beginning a month earlier than usual and wrapping up with our final pick in the second week of April.
"Due to the acquisition of a 270 acre vineyard in the King Valley, production through our Myrtleford winery increased by about 30 per cent to almost 1000 tonnes with the bulk of that being processed under contract.
"Early indications for wine quality are very promising with the whites displaying good concentration of flavour and the reds achieving a higher than usual level of ripeness.
"After a run of tough years, we have some cause for optimism for the 2014 vintage."
