New South Wales and the ACT – 2023 vintage snapshot

 

Ned Goodwin MW takes an in-depth look at the 2023 vintage across New South Wales and the ACT, and explains why it’s one for the ages.

 

Yet another la Nīna year, 2023 was a wet one with ample winter and early spring rain serving to fill the water table in NSW’s principal wine regions. The previous two vintages, similarly wet, provided the mettle of experience that only the oblivious failed to draw upon. 

 

...The best wines will stand among NSW’s very finest to date…

 

However 2023 was very different for a number of reasons. Firstly, canny growers had learnt methods of madness from the incessant rain of the past two seasons, useful to obviate the dampness and onset of downy mildew and latent botrytis, while transcending the challenges to vine health and potential yield cast upon them. According to Bryan Martin at Ravensworth, some hired helicopters to access their vineyards. Others, like Martin, bought smaller and more agile Italian tractors.

 

Bryan Martin of Ravensworth shared his thoughts on harvest in 2023

 

Secondly, things began to dry out after bud-burst, despite a bout of rain in April. 2023, while far from hot, was warmer than the previous two vintages. Remarkably, despite the accumulated moisture, Martin indicated that the soil profile actually started to dry out in February. He cites expedited transpiration rates as the culprit, rather than evaporation. This was because of the larger canopies that metastasised due to the large amounts of rain.

 

A classic Hunter Valley landscape

 

Adrian Sparks at Mount Pleasant in the Hunter opined that from September, ‘a miracle occurred’ and that things ‘just dried out nicely’. In Murrumbateman and the Canberra District, too, the weather cleared and remained temperate and dry leading up to the harvest window. It remained that way, with neither heat-spikes nor inclement shifts in the weather pattern. Hang-time was prolonged to allow abundant yields of fruit to reach optimal physiological ripeness, with each variety picked at staggered windows of near perfection as a result.

 

Martin and Sparks wryly inferred that despite tendencies to proclaim any new vintage as the proverbial ‘greatest’, 2023 is an exercise in meteorological engineering that verges on a miracle. The best wines will stand among NSW’s very finest to date.