2008 Growing Season and Vintage Report – by Steve James
After an extremely mild winter producing some of the earliest bud break on record, the spring conditions were quite challenging. September and October were cool and wet with some severe winds, where good canopy and vineyard management was essential to reduce the incidence of diseases. Fortunately November turned on some beautiful warm and dry weather which ensured flowering proceeded with a minimum of fuss and resulted in very good fruit set across all varieties.

December started with some un-seasonally cool conditions, but when the summer kicked in mid December – it really kicked. Christmas day and Boxing Day were scorchers with temperatures nudging 40 degrees for both days. Timely irrigation management was essential through this hot spell to avoid severe water stress on the vines and fruit.
The remainder of the summer was relatively hot, dry and windy. The warm, dry conditions combined with very mild night temperatures ensured the grapes were ripening quickly. Spending a lot of time in the field and tasting a lot of grapes was important as the “numbers” were not really indicating when the fruit was at its optimum flavor development.

Our harvest commenced on the 18th of February and all the whites were completed by the end of the first week in March. The whites were all harvested in pristine condition with excellent flavor development at low sugar levels and retaining very good levels of natural acidity. The end result is finer more elegant wines with lower alcohols and crisp, fresh fruit flavor profiles.

The red grape harvest commenced a couple of weeks later, again with fruit in perfect condition. It was a great year for red wines as we had ripe tannin development before full flavor development. Some of the Cabernet Sauvignon harvested from our North block was some of the best fruit we have ever seen at Voyager Estate.

Our harvest was complete by the end of the first week of April . Again the timing was perfect as the region had an early break to the season with around 60mm of rain falling in the week or so after our harvest was finished. A perfect harvest completed another outstanding vintage for Voyager Estate.