I’ve been up on the Hills, and down in the Vale – Adelaide and McLaren, respectively. As we tiptoe through vintage `09, the stories are very different.

Everywhere is dry: that’s a given. The 2009 vintage will be the third hot, dry vintage in a row. It didn’t begin like that: until the January heatwave, it had been a relatively cool year. Foster’s technical viticulturalist Dr Richard Hamilton told me yesterday that some of the January-picked Chardonnay from the Riverland was unusually good because of that cool start and mid-season. Now, though, all is heat and dust. There is another 40°C+ day forecast here in Adelaide for this Friday. How well the vines are coping depends on where their roots are planted. (Usually their own roots hereabouts.)

Geoff Weaver’s dry-grown vineyard up in the Adelaide Hills looked in remarkably good shape, for example: no malfunctioning leaves, no evident pain and stress up and down the plant, no shrivelled fruit. Clay and cool wind seems to be the answer. When the wind isn’t from the north, it can be piercingly cool up on the hills, almost Coonawarra-cool, or as cool as those Sonoma Pacific blasts which stabbed me in the back in May last year (see the ‘Walkabout in Sonoma’ blog entry). That gives night temperatures which can be as much as 10°C below those of Adelaide – and diurnal variations of up to 20°C. (It isn’t just Mendoza which can boast colossal thermal amplitude.)

Pike and Joyce: all green in the hills

The story was the same for the Henschke’s Lenswood plantings (irrigated this time – but with some of the best viticulture I have seen here: lots of mulch, an organic approach, finely positioned small bunches in a well-balanced canopy), for Blacket’s parcels nearby (the old Tim Knappstein vineyards), for the vineyards of the Joyce family (vinified, as Pike & Joyce, up in the Clare) and for the high parcel of vines of Yangoora Estate.

Drew NoonContrast Drew Noon’s dry-grown vineyard down in McLaren Vale. There’s water-retentive clay here too – but it hasn’t been enough. As we drove in Drew’s old red Beetle past the old Home Block, whose Grenache vines were planted in 1934, their suffering was plain to see. Some of the vines (those closest to the thirsty eucalypts) had given up. Forever. Just over a month ago, we all shared the planet together, simultaneously alive.

Most of the vines in the block are clinging to life, but half the fruit on the bunches is shrivelled and useless. Oddly enough, there is more fruit on the young vines, though the plants are often in even worse shape. (Drew says they have the optimism of youth, whereas the old vines are pessimists inclined to throw in the reproductive towel when the going gets too tough. Maybe libido would be a better analogy ...) Things were better across the creek in BJ’s Block, which is more open to sea breezes from the Gulf.

Justin McNameeThat’s on clay, under the escarpment edge. The fruit from dry-grown vines rooted in the sands across on the other side of the Vale has, if anything, fared even worse. Later that afternoon, I took a look at the sandy-soiled Whish Vineyard with Justin McNamee of Samuel’s Gorge: vines planted in a beach. The whole crop had gone: every bunch shrivelled to destruction.

Heat stress - young vines“It’s a vintage we’ve never seen or been able to prepare for,” says Drew, who fears for the survival of all of his wines without a wet winter this year. Vineyard to killing field? “Welcome to Aussie, and the worst vintage in history, mate”, as McLaren Vale-based journalist Philip White said to me on the phone yesterday.

The next two weeks will give me a broader perspective, from Clare, the Barossa, Canberra, Rutherglen, Heathcote, Goulburn and the Yarra, as well as a further look at the Hills and the Vale. I’ll post again later on in March.

Tasting Drew and Rae Noon’s magnificently intense, architectural creations from the 2006 vintage underlined the tragedy of 2009. These are wonderfully judged, textured and deeply allusive wines, pulsing from sweet to savoury and then back again. They softly mingle leaf, spice and fruit flavours, synthesised from the light of McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek and the pattern of ancient sediments scattered and interfolded there over 500 million years of history.

Heat stressNowhere else makes wine quite like this (the Barossa tone is different, more forceful), and there are few places on earth where Grenache can achieve this level of intrinsic complexity. Yes, Geoff Weaver’s wild-yeast ‘Ferus’ Sauvignon is just as good, but it also lies somewhere to the other end of the wine spectrum, full of blowing pollen, smooth cream, zesty fruit. We need both. Nature just now is threatening to deprive us of one.

Reduced crops, struggling vines, parched earth ... and at the same time, the big companies are offering grape prices set at around one-third below those last year, making some of the grape crop unviable. Towards the end of last year Constellation put around 1500 ha of its vineyard estate up for sale; last week, Fosters (Penfolds included) put 4500 ha up for sale, or around 40% of its total vineyard estate. Australians are by nature resilient. Optimism, though, is in short supply.