2018 Moss Wood Chardonnay, Margaret River

Moss Wood mosswood.com.au

Often our wine stories are a narrative of how we struggled against the many challenges Mother Nature threw at us before we finally triumphed, against near impossible odds, to produce a high-quality wine.  Well, with the Moss Wood 2018 Chardonnay, there will be none of that.  Quite the contrary in fact.

In reviewing the 2017/18 growing season, we were reminded of how good it was - one of those rare years when just about everything worked in our favour.  We enjoy them when they come around but often take them for granted.  For example, 1991 was very much a vintage that went by without incident.  This may sound odd but we often get a pleasant surprise when the young wines start to reveal their quality when really, there should be no surprise at all.  We hope you don’t find this boring!

Our Spring weather was near perfect.  The calendar year 2017 produced just over 10% above average rainfall, with a total of 1117mm, so the soil was nicely topped up with moisture.  However, very conveniently, the flowering period wasn’t too wet and we had regular showers but no downpours, so they did little harm to the process.  These were accompanied by temperatures that rarely dropped below 8°C, so the vines loved that as well.

Through Summer, temperatures remained moderate, so while the vines didn’t rush through their ripening, the season was roughly a week longer than average, they made steady progress and reached full maturity of both sugar and flavour with ease.  Furthermore, they experienced only 13 hours above 33°C, so there was absolutely no heat stress.  In fact, for a while we were concerned temperatures may have been a little too mild but in the end these fears were unfounded.  The vines had flowered right on their average date of 5th November and had plenty of time to get the job done.

To note how mild our Summer was, the hottest day was 14th January, when the mercury topped out at 39.1°C but apart from that, the temperature rarely went over 33°C.

We had no issues with disease or damage from pests like the birds and we cruised into the Chardonnay harvest on 7th March.  The yield of 6.15 tonnes/ha was down by roughly 10% and the ripeness was 13.5° Baume, very slightly above our average of 13.1.