Wine Loft News Blast Week of June 23rd

The 2008 Australian Harvest: Trials & Tribulations

Wow...mother nature strikes again - this time with the 2008 Harvest in Australia! Heat, frost, snow, drought, floods, and brushfires! Although this devastation will directly impact what we see coming out of Australia per the 2008 release in several years, the concern lies more in the future. The Aussies are having to learn very quickly how to deal with tricky and challenging vintages. Whether you blame it on Global Warming or not, the trend is not letting up in the least and the future will require some drastic adjustments in the land down under.

"This year we picked less than 15% of our usual Hunter reds," said Tyrell's chief winemaker, Bruce Tyrell. With water supplies at their lowest in history, growers watched their crops shrivel right in front of them. Cab production in the south was cut by three-quarters and following a small 2007 vintage, Australian exports are down in its biggest markets of Britain and the US, dropping 8.5% overall. If 2008 is the new norm, the year's to come are not going to easy.




*Taken as an excerpt from Wine Spectator July 31, 2008: Australia Grapples with a Calamitous Year*