Unlike France, a good vintage in the Barossa Valley relies on abundant winter rain. This we certainly got from the winter of 2004 and these continued on well into late spring with above-average rainfall.

This sets the vines up for a good start and with perfect late-twenty degree averages for the rest of Spring and early Summer the vines were in unstressed mode as we went into the first run of ‘green-harvesting’, which takes place once the berries are formed. With a good set and very little ‘millerandange’ things looked good. A milder than normal February gave us both cooler days and nights helping to keep up the acidity levels. Unlike 2003, when we also had hot spells, they didn’t go on for too long, and therefore there was no risk of the vines shutting down. The times remained dry with slightly higher than normal temperatures through March and April. By the time the rain finally came we were, as they say, safely gathered in.

We have decided to do all of our bottling and labelling in-house, as we do in France. This has been an interesting exercise as the team, very well used to just sending the wine off for bottling, have coped with it themselves. Our GAI machine and associated labeller was shipped out to Australia and a French Technician who only spoke French was dispatched to the Barossa compete with manuals – in French. Nonetheless, Exile and Émigré were bottled before and during vintage with the limited space at our Light Pass winery not helping the contrasting dispatches of grapes and bottles.

We started making 700 cases of wine in 2002 and with this vintage we have made over 20,000 cases. The end situation is that Light Pass has become a little small for us. As a result we have purchased 80 acres in the Moppa, in the most northern part of the Barossa Valley, close to Penfold’s acclaimed Kalimna Vineyard, and have been given permission to build a 1,000 tonne winery there which we believe will be built in 2006.

This year we have harvested three new ‘single-vineyard’ blocks which we hope to introduce next year. They are quality old-vines that are the hallmark of the Barossa Valley. In keeping with the rest of the wines that have been barrelled down this year, they show perhaps the deepest flavour we’ve seen so far since our arrival in the Barossa Valley, with a fantastic brilliance, structure, and tremendous length.

They have a long way to go to market, but they are already showing great promise!