Vintage 2025 - Wrap Up

That’s a wrap on #Vintage2025!

Eight weeks have passed since my last vintage update, and it speaks to the intensity and compaction of the season. As of today (Monday 31/3/25), all our fruit is in the winery. 

It has been a relatively intense vintage, albeit shorter than average. As I have previously mentioned, the timing of Easter is usually a major driver of our season. In an average year, the last of our fruit tends to come in just before Easter. Easter falls in late April this year, yet despite this, we had most of our fruit off a month prior. In addition to the early harvest, yields across all growing areas are well up. Many blocks here in the Hunter, along with our external regions, were carrying between 30% and 50% more fruit than average. This made a very intense late January/early February in the winery. Kate, Lorrae, Hayden and the whole Winery Cru handled this well, and the results of their effort will be evident when our 2025 wines are released.

We have had 296mm of rain here at the winery for the year, with the majority falling in late January/early February. Twenty-four of the first 47 days of 2025 were rain days. This made ripening our later blocks of Shiraz a challenge. The rain came on the back of a historically dry growing season, with only 227mm falling up from July 1 through to December 31. The dry growing season (along with Kat & Fletch’s hard work) had the vineyard in excellent condition in the lead-up to harvest.

Despite the rain, Semillon once again showed why it does so well in the Hunter. We have now classified our Semillons, and the results are very pleasing. We will have a complete make of Hunter Valley Semillon and at least four separate Single Vineyard wines. Oakey Creek and Tallawanta are the top picks at this stage. The season indeed appeared to favour Oakey Creek and the southern end of Pokolbin, with it ripening earlier than most of our other Semillon vineyards and managing to dodge the worst of any localised hail. There is genuine excitement around the valley in the quality of the Semillons from 2025, with the wines displaying great fruit weight and natural chemistry. One very experienced, well-known producer commented to me “they just have the look.” The best of them will develop wonderfully over time. 

Almost all our Shiraz came in at around 12.8-13.5 Baume. Despite the lower sugar levels, the fruit has fantastic colour from the dry growing season. Shiraz across the valley had above-average yields, and once again, the importance of fruit thinning was evident. The blocks carrying our historical average of 1.5-1.8t/acre came in early with good flavour and concentration but blocks carrying a heavier crop struggled to get over the line with the wet conditions.
At this stage, the best Hunter Valley reds are Graveyard End, Verona East & West, Tallawanta, and Mistress. The wines are all tucked away in barrel and have almost all completed malolactic fermentation. While it is early days, the reds have great colour and are classic medium-weight Hunter Valley Shiraz.

There was no chance for a break before Beechworth as Hayden, Chis and Chip headed down in early February. It has been an excellent season at Indigo Vineyard. We have the rare double of both high quality and yield! It has been a dry, hot summer in Beechworth, but fruit quality is the best that I have seen since 2016. The highlight, as always, is our Indigo Chardonnay, but the Pinot Noir and Tempranillo also show real promise.  

It has been the earliest harvest on record in McLaren Vale, coming off an incredibly dry growing season. Yields were variable, with Block 2 Shiraz being well up (following several years of reduced yields as we re-worked the vineyard to manage grapevine trunk disease), Rayner Vineyard Shiraz was around average, whilst Wade Merlot was down by around 40%. Despite this variation, both Wade Block 2 and Rayner Vineyard are of their usual high quality and, again, in good volumes. 

Above-average yields have been a feature of the season. This has given us the opportunity to once again take in a small parcel of fruit from Forest Edge. Although securing fruit from this vineyard has been a little sporadic over the last few years, it has consistently produced award-winning Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, so it is exciting to have this fruit back in the cellar for 2025.

All in all, it's been a quality harvest with good volumes. At this stage, the early highlights are the Single vineyard Semillons and our Indigo Vinyard wines. The Vineyard and Winery Cru will now catch our breath and look forward to a few days off over Easter. 

Cheers,

Stuart Hordern
Chief Winemaker