Pre Harevest 2011 report.

The season is looking great so far, with such an amazing hot and dry spring we had our earliest and fastest flowering ever, we trimmed the vines before Christmas which is a first for us. We also only had 3 frosts to fight compared to 22 last season. The flowering and fruit set was perfect which has resulted in plenty of fruit and a large yield probably similar to 2008. Since spring it has been wet, this has given great growing conditions which has meant we have had to be right on top of our canopy management and with the season being early we still have the same jobs to be done, but just need to do them faster. At Wooing Tree we have been busy fruit thinning and have taken a lot of the vineyard down to 1 bunch per shoot to give us what we want in terms of yields and to keep the quality up. We are looking like harvesting end of March, which is about 2 weeks early, the good side to this is we can get the harvest done and the grapes into the winery before most of the cold weather and frost arrive. But of course anything can happen.