The first round of fun and games wasn’t a product of Mother Nature but rather the restrictions introduced in Western Australia to manage Covid.  Our state’s borders were closed and it was extremely difficult to bring in people to help with the harvest.  We were well covered for the picking because we have a team of Hazara refugees from Afghanistan, part of the community in the local town of Busselton, who have been working with us in the vineyard now for more than 10 years.  However, we also need a vintage crew for the winery, typically made up of either students from Adelaide University or recently qualified winemakers from overseas.  The 2-week Covid isolation period meant it was only the super-keen who made it in to WA.  We gradually pieced together a good team, one of whom was Tom Hanson, recently graduated in Agricultural Science from the University of Western Australia, who proved very capable and is now a full-time member of the Moss Wood team.  Being a local boy was a huge advantage because, of course, there was no isolation requirement, so we were fortunate to find him.

While we wrestled with these administrative issues, Mother Nature was in a relatively benign mood.  Temperatures were mild but not too cold and flowering extended for 5 weeks, during which we received 12 days of rain, when a total of 89mm fell and only 6 days when the temperature dropped below 8°C.  All quite conducive to good fruit set, although yields were down slightly.  We had no damaging storms bringing strong wind or hail and no frost problems.  It also meant the flowering dates for all the Cabernet varieties were just about spot on average.

Mild conditions prevailed through the summer, so ripening progressed slowly and it became clear we were going to have a late season.  This was of no great concern because we’ve had significant experience with those sorts of years and made some very good wines, as noted above.

On 6^th February, 2021, Mother Nature threw her first curve ball.  A tropical low, not a full cyclone, given the fairly unimpressive moniker by the Bureau of Meteorology of “Tropical Low 12U”, moved down the WA coast.  Between 6^th and 10^th February, it deposited 83mm of rain onto Moss Wood.  This was early enough for the Cabernet varieties to cope easily because they were mostly still green.

Ah, thought Mother Nature, time for another challenge.  So, on 3^rd March, a winter-style cold front arrived and delivered 49mm of rain.  Having had the earlier drink, the vines were accustomed to rain and coped fine with this.  The other point to note is all the Cabernet varieties are native to the Bordeaux region of France, so have been selected over many years in seasons very similar to this one.  They have thick skins and resist splitting and disease and have a justifiable robust reputation which is reflected in the consistency of quality of wine from that region.

Her final curve ball came in the second week of April, when remnants of tropical cyclone Seroja, which had crossed the WA coast at Kalbarri, brought a further 80mm.  Prior to this, we were watching its progress very closely and made the call that we needed to start picking Cabernet Sauvignon ahead of rain’s arrival in Margaret River.  We commenced on 6^th April and all but the last 2 small parcels were off by the 9^th April.  The remainder was tidied up by 15^th April, as soon as the rain was finished.  In the end, the decision proved to be the right one.

It’s worth taking stock of what all this discussion means.  The biggest issue with rain is not the threat of fungal disease, as noted above, but rather the low temperatures that accompany it and how this slows ripening.  We can point to some useful statistics to highlight this point.  The average growing season temperature for Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon is 20.1°C but in 2021 it was 18.8°C.  When differences of 0.2°C can make a perceivable difference in wine style, it shows just what a cool season we were having.  However, there is another number that is even more significant, the 134 days that lapsed between flowering and harvest, which is 13 days longer than average.  What this means is despite the mild temperatures, Cabernet Sauvignon had sufficient time on the vines to achieve full ripeness.  This is what separates it from years like 2002 and 2006.  Both were warmer than 2021, with average temperatures of 19.6°C and 19.4°C, respectively.  Their harvest dates of 2^nd April and 19^th April were not dissimilar but the crucial difference was the days from flowering to harvest, with 2002 having only 111 days and 2006 having 125 days.  In 2021, we had sufficient time for Cabernet to achieve full ripeness, courtesy of earlier flowering.

How does this nerdy stuff manifest itself in the finished wine?   To make this clear, we return to 1975.

Moss Wood has two co-founders, Sandra and Bill Pannell and so much of what they did remains in our DNA.  Neither were trained in winemaking but driven by sheer enthusiasm and their combined good instincts, plus a strong desire to learn, they were ultimately incredibly successful. Like all good teams, their roles were slightly different, and both brought their unique skills.

Sandra was a pioneer in an era when hard-working farmers wives were given little or no recognition.  A doting mother of 4 children, all of whom can be described as “spirited” characters, she also made time and energy to tackle the relentless hands-on work and long days of viticulture and winemaking and to run a small wine business.  Bill was a local GP, a scientist and technician who thrived on the physical challenges.  Phew!  There wasn’t much spare time and we can only admire their dedication.

Sandra has impeccable good taste and is an oracle of fashion, who adored the style and elegance of Audrey Hepburn.  An extension of this was she brought an intuitive interpretation to wine tasting and which manifested itself in her descriptions of our original, famous “twin” wines, the 1975 and 1976 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignons.  The former, with its cool year classical complexity, elegance and restraint was, of course, an Audrey Hepburn.  The latter, was a warm, ripe year, more “in your face” and, for Sandra, a Dolly Parton wine.  This is not to belittle the remarkable career of the incredibly talented Dolly but quite simply, she had captured the essence of their differences.  In comparing the ’75 and ’76 to two different women, Sandra was talking about their style and her comments captured their work as both were stars, in their own right.