Moss Wood 2019 Chardonnay

Vintage Notes

Margaret River has developed a tremendous reputation for its Chardonnay wines and yet the variety’s contribution to the total vineyard area in our region doesn’t really reflect this. Consumers may also notice the relative scarcity of Margaret River Chardonnays on retail shelves and restaurant wine lists. The reasons for this were front and centre for the 2019 vintage.

While we have generally very good conditions for grape growing, our maritime climate can be a blessing and a curse. We enjoy a wet but mild winter which means the temperatures do not drop low enough to keep the early varieties, and Chardonnay in particular, in a long dormancy. For example, as this newsletter is being written at the end of August, the Moss Wood Chardonnay is now well into budburst. However, the wet and cold weather hasn’t finished and, in some years, can run through until December. Those sensitive new shoots are at risk of being damaged by strong winds, hail and even frost. Add to this the variety’s relative softness, which makes viticulturists joke that it’s the one which will catch a cold, and it becomes clear that the Margaret River and Chardonnay do not always get along.

To put it bluntly, in 2019 we saw all the things that can go wrong.

Frost is not an especially common event here but Moss Wood’s topography does make us somewhat frost prone. Cold air can collect in our little valley and will sit over two of the Chardonnay blocks and on very cold nights we get frosts. Serious frosts occurred in 1981, 1982, 1987, 2017 and 2018, although we can get light frosts in just about any year. The ’81 event was very nasty, coming as it did in mid-October, wiping out the bottom third of the Moss Wood vineyard. With it went more than 80% in each of the Chardonnay, Semillon and Cabernet Sauvignon blocks in that area.

In 2018, on 15th September, we had a frost of almost the same scale but were lucky in some respects, because Cabernet Sauvignon had not been through budburst so we were spared the worst. However, two of our Chardonnay blocks copped a nasty hit. The temperature at our weather station, well above the cold zone, dropped to 0.3°C. Ouch! Losses in both were 90% and Clare and Keith became media personalities for a week or so after it was picked up by the press.

What followed was everything we don’t like about a Margaret River spring. Over the 50 days during which the Chardonnay flowered, we had 14 days of rain and 15 days when the temperature dropped below 8°C, all of which disrupted the process. The only thing we didn’t get was hail, so perhaps we should be thankful. The resulting yield of 3.61 tonnes per hectare was a dismal 47% down.

After flowering things progressed relatively easily but Mother Nature had one last trick up her sleeve for 2019 – the birds. The redgum flowering was virtually non-existent and the silvereye birds developed a voracious appetite for grapes. We applied nets to keep them off and had some success and the losses were minimised but the already small crop meant we had to pick and sort every bunch as carefully as possible.

After this tale of woe, readers will be amused to know the season was absolutely brilliant for ripening conditions and flavour development. Temperatures remained moderate right through the summer and Chardonnay received only 6 hours where the mercury exceeded 33°C. It made its way lazily to full ripeness over 121 days, using up 1130 hours between 18° and 28°C from flowering to harvest, a week longer than normal, crossing the finish line on 25th March at a ripeness of 13.1° Baume, exactly its long-term average. We could not have been happier with how it all tasted.