Weather in Spring at the end of 2003 during budburst and the emergence of flowers for the 2004 season was terrific; cool but sunny with little wind meant that fruit set was the fullest seen since 2001. With fine conditions the 2004 season looked very promising, good shoot growth was achieved early and there was low disease pressure in the early part of the season. As the bunches developed however there were several episodes of rain and extended humidity across the whole state with some early incidence of Botrytis cineria infection in Riesling. We sent workers through to physically remove the infected bunches to prevent the disease spreading further. In hindsight we could have left the bunches there because there followed an intense warm period which dried up any disease on the vine and turned the infected berries into raisins that dropped off the bunch as the season developed.
Conditions throughout the remainder of the ripening season were very good with the early varieties such as Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Verdelho developing good flavour.
The fruit was given a very gentle crush - just sufficient to burst the individual berries. The resultant "free-run", being the finest quality juice, free from the "grippy", bitter phenolics associated with the skins, was kept separate from the "pressings". This wine was selected from batches of riper Riesling harvested later in the season. The ferment was kept very cool and stopped when the sugar levels were in balance with the higher acid levels inherent in this variety leaving a level of sweetness in the wine.