Western Australia – 2023 vintage snapshot
Despite lower yields than normal, Ned Goodwin MW is impressed by the quality of wines from Western Australia’s 2023 vintage.
While Western Australia often boasts a radically different template of growing conditions to the eastern states, the La Nīna conditions of 2023 were pervasive on this side of the country also. A cold, wet winter segued to a similarly cool spring, impinging on flowering and yields. While quantities were small, quality was very high with the proviso that one had to be assiduous in the vineyard and stringent when it came to sorting the fruit, both in the vineyard and in the winery.
‘... This said, while yields were stingy, quality was high…’
The ripening season was prolonged as the summer dried out, resulting in wines of concentration and rapier-like freshness in Great Southern. The rieslings are stunning and the reds need time to ‘uncoil’, according to Hunter Smith of Frankland Estate.
In Margaret River, it was a different story, as the lack of Karri bloom saw the native birdlife feast on the grapes instead, only exacerbating the paltry quantities on fruit that the cooler weather from flowering to bud burst had determined. This said, while yields were stingy, quality was high. The reds are lissome, refined and elegant, rather than of a more powerful idiom.