2008 – The First Vintage – Growing Season – Moss Wood 2008 Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir

Since there are roughly 3000 kilometres separating them, it probably comes as no surprise that the growing seasons can be quite different in Mornington Peninsula compared to Margaret River. Although this is our first foray into making wine in Victoria, we’ve had some insight into this over the years. Collectors of wine will be familiar with the fact that the great vintages on the eastern seaboard do not necessarily coincide with the great years for those of us producing wine on the west coast.

When looking at the coincidence of high quality vintages, the 1990 is perhaps the greatest of them all, when both sides of the country produced some sensational wines. Of the difficult years, we need to look no further than 1989, when both sides of the country had to struggle through a wet and generally disappointing season. For the other years where one side was good and the other not so good, perhaps the best examples are 1998 and 2009. During the former, most eastern seaboard regions produced some of their very best wines but Western Australian growers struggled with rain. On the other hand, the latter season was very exciting for the Sandgropers but problematic, to say the least, for South Australians and Victorians, in particular. So we approached our first vintage in what for us is a new region with considerable excitement about what the season may hold.

In the early stages, the Mornington Peninsula season was following a typically average timeline, if perhaps slightly early. Growing conditions were very favourable with no disease problems and although there were some cold nights in the late spring, the region did not suffer any frosts. Flowering went through in good conditions and reached its mid-point on 21st November. For curiosity’s sake, readers may be interested that Margaret River Pinot Noir went through the same stage 10 days earlier. Bunch sizes were good and yields were expected to be at least average. Late spring rains also meant the vines had plenty of soil moisture.

Through the summer, typically mild to warm conditions prevailed and by early February the vines were making slow but steady progress and expectations continued for a mid-March harvest. Once the fruit began to change colour the birds became a threat but damage was limited by the application of nets.

By this stage we had noticed a physical difference in the Mornington fruit because its seeds were ripening more slowly than in Margaret River. At Moss Wood the seeds progress quite quickly from soft and green to crunchy and brown but in Mornington they go through an intermediate stage of being soft and white. This leads to a distinct difference in the impact of the tannins because during this stage the seeds taste distinctly of coconut and display quite assertive and drying phenolics. These gradually changed to brown and crunchy as the season progressed but left us with the impression that seed ripeness is a slow process and we kept a close eye on it.

At the beginning of March, the temperatures began to rise and followers of motorsport will remember the Australian Grand Prix was held in extremely warm conditions. At the southern end of Port Phillip Bay the Mornington Peninsula was enjoying the heat and the vineyards picked up their ripening rates, bringing picking dates forward by a week or more. In the end, when picked on 8th March the fruit had taken 108 days from flowering to ripen. By comparison, the Margaret River Pinot Noir took 94 days and was picked on 13th February.

As expected, the good flowering conditions resulted in very reasonable yields. The 114 clone cropped at 3.7 kilograms per vine and the 115 clone was slightly higher at 4.34. This translated to 8.23 and 9.64 tonnes per hectare, respectively. Margaret River Pinot Noir, after crop thinning, produced 2.79 kilograms per vine or 4.63 tonnes per hectare. The numbers are not directly comparable because our home vineyard is planted with 1658 vines per hectare whereas the Mornington vineyard has 2222.