Victoria – 2023 vintage snapshot

Ned Goodwin MW assesses the quality of the 2023 vintage across Victoria, which despite being low yielding, produced some exceptional wines.

Victoria experienced what Martin Spedding of Mornington Peninsula’s Ten Minutes by Tractor hopes is ‘the last dance with La Nīna.’ At least for a while! This is not to imply that good wines were not made in the region in 2023, but that as with the rest of the state, there are very few of them.

Higher than average rainfall and cool temperatures meant that flowering was stunted, disease pressures constant and yields low across Victoria. This said, despite the economic repercussions of minuscule quantities of fruit, there were many excellent wines made due to the slow, prolonged ripening window of the vintage. 

‘... Assiduous viticulture was intrinsic to quality wine: open canopies to promote ventilation and the expedition of optimal ripeness…’

This extended hang-time resulted in wines of extract, indelible freshness and a savoury aura over obvious sweet fruit. A state-wide purview suggests that whites were largely superior to reds and grape varieties of an earlier ripening physiognomy such as chardonnay and pinot noir, preferable to later ripeners like cabernet. However, the peripatetic conditions meant that quality was more often than not grower and site-dependent. Assiduous viticulture was intrinsic to quality wine: open canopies to promote ventilation and the expedition of optimal ripeness. Equally, stringent sorting of fruit in the vineyard and winery. 

With this in mind, Mornington Peninsula and Geelong performed well, while Beechworth chardonnay was, to all reports, outstanding. The Yarra was a mixed bag, failing to achieve physiological ripeness in cabernet, albeit, offering a swathe of fine white wines and pinot noirs, with no dearth of structure. Gippsland, too, was challenged by disease and botrytis pressures due to peripatetic weather changes from a deluge of rain, to warm humid conditions and then, more rain. The Grampians was an exception to the rule, protected from much of the lousy weather by its propitious positioning in the west of the state, nuzzling the Great Divide. Aromatic, finely tuned peppery shiraz, the result.