The vintage of 2009 commenced on week one of February which was a welcome return to a normal starting time after earlier starts in previous years.

Chenin from The Tuarts vineyard was the first to be picked. We again picked slightly earlier than full brightness with the aim of retaining good natural acidity and knowing that Tony Mann’s Swan chenin would be slightly riper.

We also wanted to have enough sparkling chenin blanc base material as stocks were becoming low.

I have recently blended the varying parcels of chenin blanc into one tank and I am very optimistic this will be one of chenin’s better vintages.

Weather conditions were ideal for ripening of shiraz at the Mariginiup vineyard. We managed to pick the fruit between the lulls of hot spells. This meant that shiraz was fully flavour-ripe without excessive baumes that do occur in warmer years.

Both quality and quantity is very good and with the new oak barrels arriving this week, the wine will benefit from refined oak maturation.

The muscat for the Fronti was also in good supply so look forward to the return of the fresh, musk and rose petal scented 2009!

For the first time we bought a small parcel of organically grown premium Margaret River sauvignon blanc from the Rosaglen sub-district. This wine will only be available from the cellar door and our restaurant.

Grenache and cabernet sauvignon were the last two reds from our estate vineyards with the cabernet my pick of the two. It shows good varietal, mint and eucalypt characters.

The tempranillo from Mann’s Swan vineyard was also very impressive and I made the decision to skip the 2008 believing the quality was not up to standard.

Both chardonnay and pinot noir from our grower in Manjimup was exceptional, but came in very small quantities. The pinot noir in particular is a third of our normal production, but exhibits beautiful colour and aromatics. This is one wine I will be paying particular attention to as it is simply too scarce and too good to lose.

The chardonnay was whole-bunch pressed directly into new and one year old French oak barrels for fermentation. This has given the wine a great creaminess, though there are only three barrels of it.

At the time of writing, it’s been eight weeks of non-stop, seven days a week, slog.

I’m looking forward to having a day off; hopefully this week will see the last of the small parcels of merlot from our Manjimup grower, and we can get Easter off.

All in all, vintage has been very good and I look forward to releasing these wines.

Salute!

Jason Conti