2025 growing season detail, sun wind and rain.

The site is the same, the winemaking is the same, the difference again is the season, my experience and incremental improvements in site and vine health. Every year the same vines and the same process meet a different Barossa summer, these days it seems there is no normal, let alone a stable new normal, and 2025 was another reminder of this.

Spring started with great excitement, excellent and even budburst and hope of not another frost… but frost, again. As I am adapting and learning about this site each season brings a humbling lesson to learn from. I once again pruned really late to push growth as late into spring as possible, this action combined with leaving extra buds on the spurs, was my only insurance. This did keep the minimise the loss and mainly confined to the smaller low vines, and not total crop loss. From December onwards it turned dry (Table 1), and the season was warm-hot with the driest growing season of recent time. The local Vine Vale weather station read 19 days above 35°C, peaking at 41°C in early February before harvest. Much like this most recent vintage 2026, the vintage memory will say ‘Hot vintage’ but the wine specs are remarkably similar to previous seasons before it, such as 2024. Interesting as we adapt and adjust growing, I think the lower crops in 2024 and 2025 gave the vines less to ripen so stress was reduced, we picked early while the fruit was fresh and acids strong and this wine is the result, perhaps the freshness is aided by the local phenomenon of the Vine Vale nurse.

Table 1. Vintage rainfall snapshots from V22-V25, growing season only. Note that 2025 was the driest season on record in the data's depth of 22 years. Source is BOM Nuriootpa.

Ask any locals about playing tennis at the Vine Vale tennis club (as I did as a kid) and it is damn windy, the katabatic winds that come from the higher Eden Valley nearby to the east even in hot years slow vine growth, maturity and can . This was on my mind so I did some digging… it turns out the ‘Vine Vale nurse’ is real, looking at Table 2 this shows that Vine vale is overall a lot windier than Moppa to the west. Interestingly this is also the case either side of heat events. As a Viti this is important as it means the vines cool down after hot days dissipating the days heat and it also slows shoot growth and transpiration through the constant movement while keeping disease pressure down.

Table 2. Sub regional comparison of wind speed in both Vine Vale on the east to Moppa in the north-west. Wind speed averages and maximum for the last 4 years, also the wind either side of a heat event demonstrating the vine vale nurse effect. Source Barossa Greenbrain weather station.

None of this comes down to vine age on its own. The work that keeps these old bush vines producing every year is vine-by-vine: reading which ones can handle some more wood and which ones need to focus on vegetative growth. The frost was a blip on these vines long lives and as I prune for the 2027 crop now, I can see amazing recovery and great structures that will live for decades as old vine arms.

The 2025 wine is a great reflection of the trials and tribulations of working with old vines and the seasons. This wine again represents a time capsule of all of the above information and more that can be compared to our other releases or as a single bottle, with multiple people. Enjoy the detail and the experience as it's not easy to get to this far. Cheers