Moss Wood 2024 Semillon

Vintage Notes

The 2023/24 growing season saw old hands, Clare and Keith, carried back in time, all the way to 1994/95.  The ‘95 and ‘24 vintages are nearly identical and characterised by warm, dry conditions.  For the former, we don’t have temperature information because it pre-dates our weather station by 5 years.  However, we can say with certainty 2024 is the warmest since 2007, with a series of warm nights in February.

At Moss Wood we love the warm, dry seasons because they deliver reliable quality, courtesy of a relatively disease-free crop and comfortable attainment of full ripeness in the grapes.  While there are concerns with lower rainfall, our dry-farmed vines have some resistance to drought.  For confirmation of this, look no further than the fact 1995, also a lower rainfall year, is considered one of Margaret River’s finest years and we’re confident 2024 is on the way to similar status.

Nevertheless, the season caused some discussion amongst the wider wine community and this is understandable. For Clare and Keith, as much as they hate to admit it, the wisdom of years means they’ve seen this before but any vineyard managers and winemakers who have recently joined the industry, will not have experienced these conditions and may consider them atypical.  Indeed, this will have been amplified by the impact of 2017, 2019 and 2021, each of which were very mild and quite different to 2024.

Returning to the discussion of 23/24, it started in a boringly normal fashion with Semillon commencing flowering 6 days earlier than average on the 30^th October and lasting for a very prompt 18 days. No rainfall was recorded during the period and the temperature never dropped below 6.6°C. Conditions were ideal and allowed the Semillon to set it’s fruit in near-perfect weather.

The calendar year 2023 brought 880mm of rain which was 13% below average. This alone wouldn’t necessarily be an issue for the vines; however, the timing of the rain is important. Just 10mm was recorded from when the vines began flowering at the end of October until harvest on the 13^th February. This lack of rainfall is apparent with the yield of just 4.97t/ha, some 63% below average.

The fruit was in fantastic condition and the flavours were excellent when we harvested it on 13^th February, 3 weeks earlier than average.  The vines had enjoyed 942 hours in optimal ripening range of 18-28°C, as well as 89 hours above 33°C.