2020’s demise just a little far-fetched

Harvesting of the 2020 vintage is only just underway and already the Chicken Littles are declaring smoky skies are falling on our heads.

The 2017 Mount Pleasant Rosehill is Hunter Valley shiraz at its best.

Harvesting of the 2020 vintage is only just under way and already the Chicken Littles are declaring smoky skies are falling on our heads.

There’s no denying this is a vintage facing significant challenges. Fire has destroyed vineyards in the Adelaide Hills, Tumbarumba in NSW and on Kangaroo Island. The cumulative effects of years of drought are a much more widespread shaper of this season, and in many regions yields are forecast to be significantly down.

But to write off an entire vintage in a country with more than 60 distinct wine regions spread across a continent is shortsighted nonsense. The picture of an Australian vintage is always too big a subject to be painted with a single tarred brush.

If you look back at the most derided vintage in recent memory, the wet and mouldy 2011 season, plenty of wines kick back against the notion it was a year best forgotten.

The problems of 2011 were much more widespread than the fire-related issues plaguing this year, but with hindsight it has been shown that plenty of people produced outstanding wines in this blighted season.

The Yarra Valley suffered more than most with its reds but made some brilliant whites. McLaren Vale signature shiraz style struggled in 2011, but the region produced some spectacular grenache and you could say the variety’s recent resurgence really started there.

Mt Pleasant ‘Rosehill’ Shiraz 2017, Hunter Valley, $50

Margaret River had another in a long run of idyllic vintages, and the 2011 reds from the Hunter drink beautifully now and have many years ahead of them.

Yet some people still shudder at the mention 2011, avoiding them on wine lists as though ordering them three times would conjure up Beetlejuice.

The wine world is always susceptible to small snippets becoming the full story, its inherent complexity often leading to people clutching a small truth as if it were the whole truth.

The 2020 vintage will be forever scorched by fire, but only in certain places, and even in those places to differing degrees.

The Hunter Valley has been hit hard. Smoke in the air for months on end has taken a heavy toll. Last week Chris Tyrrell, chief operating officer of Tyrrell’s Wines, came out and declared 80 per cent of the company’s crop would go unpicked because of smoke taint.

For the grandson of the legendary Murray Tyrrell, the man who famously declared a vintage of the century several times a decade, such brutally honest assessment must be tough.

But you’ve just got to do what you’ve just got to do, a position shared by Adrian Sparks, chief winemaker at Mount Pleasant.

“We tested fruit and made micro-ferments to test as well,” he says. “We sent it off to two independent testing facilities and we also had La Trobe University install a smoke meter in the vineyard to provide some extra data. Nothing they told us was what you’d want to hear.”

So the decision was made to not pick a single berry in this vintage. With a parent company in administration, the decision to forgo what would’ve amounted to almost 30,000 cases can’t have been easy. “But what else can you do?” says Sparks. “You could try and pick and process, maybe flog it off as bulk, but you’re really just compounding the problem. The safest thing to do is not throw any more money at it and just drop it all on the ground.”

There are sure to be other Hunter winemakers making similarly tough decisions in coming weeks, and others, especially those with fruit sources towards the region’s northeast, who may be able to dodge a bullet.

The Hunter has been affected by fires surrounding it, but what about a region directly touched by fire? The Adelaide Hills lost about 1100ha of vineyards in the Cudlee Creek fire of December 20.

There’s obvious immediate impact in the loss of those 1100ha but the effects of the fire on the vineyards remaining may well be negligible.

The smoke from the Cudlee Creek fire cleared relatively quickly and many vineyards in a region as large and geographically diverse as the Adelaide Hills would be untouched.

Tyrells ‘Stevens’ Single Vineyard Shiraz 2017, Hunter Valley, $50

Those that would’ve seen smoke were at earlier stage of the ripening process, helping to alleviate the long-term impact of smoke exposure.

Smoke taint is primarily transmitted through the grape skins, and the Hills vineyards had not yet gone through veraison, the point in the ripening process where the berries change colour and the skins start to soften.

Tests are being conducted in the Hills and there may still be some bad news, but a forecast for doom and gloom is overly pessimistic and inaccurate.

There’s no way anyone’s forgetting these fires, but to define the 2020 vintage by them is to let smoke obscure the full picture.

There still are months to go before the last fruit is picked, and who knows what this season will throw at us yet? This story has a long way to play out yet.

Tyrrells Stevens Single Vineyard Shiraz 2017, Hunter Valley, $50

Mount Pleasant Rosehill Shiraz 2017, Hunter Valley, $50

If there’s some consolation in the news Tyrrells and Mount Pleasant will offer little or nothing to mark the 2020 vintage, it is that there are still wines from the great 2017 vintage available.

Both these wines come from great old Hunter vineyards and show just how special shiraz in this place can be when blessed by a fortuitous season.

Sorrow drowning shiraz at its best.