From Bare Vines to First Flowers: The Quiet Beginning of the 2027 Vintage

Long before a single grape appears, the story of a vintage begins in the stillness of winter. While the vineyard looks dormant to the untrained eye, this is when the first, most important decisions of the year are made.

Pruning: the first act of care

Through the colder months, our vineyard team moves vine by vine, cutting back last season’s growth by hand. It looks simple, but it isn’t. Every cut is a judgement call, how much to leave, where the next season’s growth should come from, how to set the vine up for a healthy, balanced year ahead. Too much growth left on the vine and the plant exhausts itself spreading its energy too thin. Too little, and there’s not enough left to build on. Get it right, and you’ve given the vine exactly what it needs to do its best work. No more, no less.

It’s a quiet kind of care, repeated thousands of times across the vineyard, long before anyone outside the farm is thinking about wine at all.

Budburst: the first sign of life

Budburst played out here from late August, when the earliest vines, always the Chardonnay first, had their own little Chardy Party and began pushing new growth through what looked like bare, dead wood. It’s a quietly thrilling time in the vineyard, because it’s the first real signal of how the season is shaping up. A gentle even start is exactly what everyone is hoping for. 

This part is almost entirely out of human hands. Soil temperature, rainfall, the particular warmth of Spring, the vines respond to all of it in its own time. Our role here is to watch, protect and let nature do what it does best. 

Through September that meant careful vineyard spraying to protect the young, vulnerable growth as it developed. Unglamourous but necessary work that goes on quietly behind the scenes of every vintage.

Flowering: where the vintage really begins

Through September and October, those first shoots grew into the delicate clusters that would become this years flowers and by late October, our vineyard had moved through one of the most important windows of the whole growing year. Flowering determines how many grapes will actually form on each vine and it happens in a matter of weeks. Still weather and gentle warmth help the flowers set well. A cold snap or heavy rain at exactly the wrong moment can reduce the crop before it’s even really begun!

It’s a humbling stretch for everyone involved, because there’s genuinely very little anyone can do to control it. Our Vineyard Manager, George, and his team watched closely through this period, made small adjustments where they could and otherwise simply let the season unfold. There’s a real respect here for what nature is doing, not an attempt to override it.

Why this matters for the bottle in your glass

It’s easy, when you’re enjoying a glass of wine with friends, to forget that it started almost eighteen months earlier with a pair of secateurs and a cold winter morning. Every bottle carries this whole journey inside it. The patience of pruning, the hope of budburst, the delicate balance of flowering all long before a single grape has even formed.

I find there’s something genuinely special in knowing that. It doesn’t just deepen the appreciation of what’s in the glass, it’s a reminder of how much quiet, careful work goes into something we so often enjoy without a second thought.

We’ll keep sharing this journey with you as the season unfolds. From flowering, through to ripening and harvest next year. For now, come and raise a glass with us, and consider that the wine you’re drinking right now began its life in a vineyard not unlike the one just outside our Cellar Door.

Cool Climate, Warm Welcome.

Candice