First the goods news, then the bad. Australian shiraz might well achieve unprecedented quality from the 1995 vintage, but there’s hardly going to be any of it. As far as premium shiraz is concerned, those vineyards best able cope with the drought of ’95 are generally those dryland properties whose vines are used to having to find water like a camel in a desert. What makes this year even harder than most, is that most drought-affected wine regions are facing their second consecutive season without sufficient rain. Crop levels are down by up to 40-50% in many of our high-volume wine areas like the Barossa Valley, where last year’s devastating frosts simply exacerbated the yield problem. Although the degree of desperation varies from place to place, it is appropriate to say that supplies of soil moisture and surface water reserves are lower than at any time in the living memory of some pretty old people. Meanwhile out west in Victoria, Trevor Mast, a mere stripling of youthful middle age, says he has to go back to 1967 for a comparable dry. 1983 was bad, he says, when yields in western Victoria were further reduced by killer frosts. ‘Nobody knew what to do then,’ he says. ‘Right now we’re all petrified about next year if we don’t get huge rains. Then 1996 would become the biggest problem of all.’ Although he’s had to resort to irrigating with salty water, Trevor Mast’s main problem differs from most Australian growers. With resources stripped to a minimum in the nearby forests, the local population of kangaroo and deer now rate Mount Langi Ghiran’s vineyard as highly as might any well-informed wine enthusiast. ‘Deer cut clean through the cane and eat the whole lot,’ says Mast, ‘while the roos just strip off the leaves and leave the cane alone.’ You read it here first. Mast’s soils and subsoils are so dry that whenever he waters, the osmotic effect drags water away from the root zone too quickly for the vines to take up much moisture at all. So, instead of watering for eight hours at a time, he finds he needs to use twenty and this year he’s applied three times the usual amount of water he would normally use. The large dam he recently built is now empty, and for the first time ever he has resorted to salty water from an old dam. This he hopes, will be a strictly once-off requirement. If other regions like Coonawarra and Padthaway, which irrigate regularly in a normal season, are experiencing a similar need to add additional water, one fears for the effect it will have on their rapidly salinating soil profiles. Although at time of writing, his shiraz grapes were still small and yet to develop full colour, Trevor Mast is hopeful for some excellent shiraz at virtually normal yields from 1995. Back in the Barossa, Rocky O’Callaghan is not quite as concerned. After all, his fruit is taken from true dryland vineyards, the type most likely to survive and thrive to some extent in extended drought conditions. ‘Last year was a big crop of high quality’, he says. ‘This year shows that grapevines aren’t machines. But look at the positive aspect. Droughts nearly always create bloody good wines.’ Although he’s loathe to make early predictions, O’Callaghan admits the early signs are good. ‘The fruit looks terrific, with great density and concentration of colour and flavour. Bunch numbers are low and there’s hardly any juice in the grapes’, he says. Way north in the Hunter, Peter Hall says he hasn’t seen a year remotely as good as this on a qualitative basis for red wine. ‘Everyone in the Hunter will have fantastic reds – it’s so hard to stuff this year up.’ Seemingly adapting perfectly and naturally to the potentially catastrophic conditions, the Hunter produced good, healthy, low crops which ripened quickly on vines with plenty of foliage. Unusually forceful winds at flowering, which blew away an entire five metre pile of sand at Peter Hall’s house, helped to reduce potential crop loads. You can bet he wasn’t happy at the time, but he’s not complaining now. According to Hall, who says if you live in the Hunter for thirty years you will make thirty entirely different wines, the 1995 reds are different to classic drought wines. ‘They don’t have the porty characters that you expect when grapes are ripened through dehydration. They’re not over the top and there will actually be some rich, long-living wines with true elegance. They’re not too heavy and aggressive, but have great colours and flavours. But when you crop it at half a tonne to the acre, shiraz doesn’t make a light wine!’ It’s low yields, however, that should send danger signals to those who enjoy Australian shiraz. Its small size, yet high quality, will only add to the burgeoning demand for this wine. Will our wine makers put up prices because they have less to sell and because it might be better than ever? Will our exporters tell their hard-won overseas markets they can’t have any of this potentially outstanding vintage because they’re putting the Australian wine drinker first? Or will our wine companies make more premium than ever from 1995, leaving something of a vacuum at the $10 level? If that happens, what will they fill it with? By Christmas, I guess, we’ll know we’ll know whether to laugh or cry.
