Keen for sunshine
Rain and frost risk to vineyards
WINE growers are hoping for rain but not frost as wet and cold conditions are forecast this week for Hobart and the state’s biggest wine growing region – the Tamar Valley.
Grape vines are just starting to bud and, while some rain is welcome, frosts and too much of a drenching are not.
The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast frosts inland in Tasmania on Monday and Tuesday.
The temperature is forecast to drop to just 2C in Launceston, -4C at Liawenee and snow is expected to fall at Lake St Clair.
Then the state is set for a soaking.
Showers are forecast to start on Wednesday and continue right through to next weekend.
Mapleton Vineyard’s Paul Laing said the rainy start to the spring season had laid a solid groundwork for the upcoming growing season.
Now, Mr Laing is hoping the rains will ease off to allow the flowering season to take its course.
“The season’s shaping up pretty good, coming off the back of last year’s wet season. That’s set us up with some solid soil moisture,” Mr Laing said.
“What we get is beneficial as long as it slows up in the next six weeks when we start flowering. A bit of sunshine now would be nice.”
The 2021 Tasmanian wine grape vintage enjoyed the much soughtafter combination of good yields and exceptional quality, setting a new record for the value of wine grapes.
This year’s harvest returned to average yields following a low-cropping 2020 vintage, with an increase of 18 per cent to around 1.05 million dozen bottles of wine (14,478 tonnes).
The quality of wine grapes was reflected in the record value of $3146 per tonne, compared with the national average of $701 per tonne.
Pinot noir made up 48.2 per cent of the crop and the Tamar Valley was Tasmania’s biggest wine producing area.