It's February 12th and veraison still looks some way off in many vineyards - it's been a cool, wet season with all too sporadic heat spikes. Disease pressure has been very high and as the rain lashed down across much of South Australia yesterday, many growers must have been wondering what else could befall them this season.
Ever since I've been travelling to Australia, drought has been a very real issue - I remember Sam Plunkett telling me over 10 years ago that lack of water for grass meant the local cows were being fed on the pulp from the orange juice factory. I was also here a couple of years ago when the mercury hit 48 degrees in Adelaide and people perished in the fires that enveloped much of Victoria.
It is therefore astonishing that the situation has been reversed with, at times, frightening speed. Weather patterns right across Australia (Perth is currently experiencing devastating fires)have been at odds with the norm and after the recent floods and cyclones in Queensland one does wonder what next?
Yesterday, I was in the Barossa at Thorn Clarke and Sam Clarke, through the mist of pouring rain, looked mournfully at his lost lawn as a plague of locusts munched on the green shoots - let's hope there is nothing else quite so biblical on the way!
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