Our Head of Viticulture, Mike Saunders, shares the all the vineyard activity as spring growth surges and the team prepare for a new season.

"Budburst is now complete across all our blocks, with Cabernet Sauvignon being the last to emerge. Chenin and Chardonnay, on the other hand, have been charging along for about a month and are already reaching the 7–8 leaf stage in some areas.

This is a crucial time in the vineyard as we focus on maintaining healthy vines. We're busy managing sprays to protect against powdery mildew, and potentially downy mildew if the rain persists. We’re also closely monitoring the moon phases, as weevils tend to appear around the first full moon in October. However, early soil checks suggest they might arrive sooner this year.

As part of our organic approach, we don’t use herbicides. Instead, we manage competition under the vines through mechanical weeding, which we’ll be doing full-time over the next few weeks. This method not only helps reduce competition for nutrients but also controls weevils in the soil.

Canopy management is also top of mind right now. We’re going through the process of shoot thinning, leaving only the shoots that bear fruit or originate from the buds we selected during pruning. This ensures consistent fruit quality and gives the vines ample time to ripen throughout the season. We’ll begin with Chenin and Chardonnay, moving on to the reds in the next week or two.

With the vines in a period of rapid growth, we’re also feeding them with seaweed and fish-based fertilisers to support healthy shoot development.

In Block 8, we’re rejuvenating a section by re-trunking half the block to combat trunk disease. Rather than replanting, we’re cutting the vines low to encourage new watershoots that will replace the old trunks, giving these vines a fresh start."