LOCAL wine grape growers face a nervous few weeks as a wet spring and several other setbacks since are going to lead to a delayed and reduced harvest.

Both family-owned growers in the region have reported a range of difficulties as they battle to get their crops off the vines to winemakers keen for as much as they can produce.

The weather has been the main culprit – the La Nina spring and early summer getting things off to a bad start from which it hasn’t recovered, in some cases from unprecedented events.

Jack and Lois Doeven grow about 26 acres (10.5ha) in pinot noir, pinot gris, riesling and chardonnay at their Drumborg property.

 “Things were looking quite good until mid-October,” Mr Doeven said.

“Then the skies opened in no uncertain manner.

“We had so much water around we had to dig 300m of drains in areas where we’ve grown grapes for more than 20 years and never had a waterlogging problem.

“I was thinking things couldn’t get much worse – then they did.

“The hail started coming down (on November 22) but it was the wind with the hail that did the damage and chopped them in the side – where there was good green growth the bunches were often protected by the leaves.

“In three months we lost $50,000, though it wasn’t really evident until Christmas time.

“The ones that did set, set quite well and it made me realise without that storm it would’ve been a bumper crop.”

But that wasn’t the end of it.

“On top of that we’ve had the worst downy mildew I’ve ever seen – in the Coonawarra there are vineyards that have shut the gate on the season because of that – we lost $10,000 worth four days before Christmas.

“We’ve never had downy mildew attack the fruit before, sometimes it’s been on leaves but never the fruit.

“It’s just a really bad coincidence of events. Nothing we did worked.

“Since Christmas everything’s calmed down and we’ve been able to go on but we’ll have a slightly less than average crop (about 60 tonnes) for the fourth year in a row.

“It’s a bit difficult to tell because so many bunches have been completely eliminated – we go around doing bunch counts when the shoots are only short but so many of the bunches have only got half the grapes on them.”

Mr Doeven was philosophical though about the run of bad seasons.

“In the 2000s we had quite a few dry years and we had great crops,” he said.

“That’s what we need – this really bad spring weather is really quite difficult, we’ve had three years of wetter than average conditions.”

Now the focus turns to the harvest.

“It’s going to be a later season because of the cold, wet spring,” Mr Doeven said.

“We hope for a dry March because we’ll need it. We should be finished by mid-April.

“We do pick a bit for sparkling which is picked about three-quarter ripe and we’ll be picking that some time around the long weekend in March then 10 days or so later we start picking table wine fruit.”

While it might be a below-average yield, it will be in demand.

“We’ve got four winemakers who are very, very happy to get our fruit,” Mr Doeven said.

Lois Doeven said the lower harvest would mean about 25 pickers were required, instead of the usual 35-40, but there was an upside.

“We can have less people and give them more money,” she said.

“If they’re happy to they can do more of the work and we can spread it over a couple of weeks.

“I’ve picked grapes myself and it isn’t an easy job and I fully understand what the job is like so I try really hard to make it as good for them as I possibly can.”

A little further south, Angela and Larry Vaughan are preparing for their second harvest at Cobboboonee Vineyard, west of Heywood.

The couple have about 23 acres (9.3ha) in pinot noir, pinot gris, pinot meuniere, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz grapes – the major buyers are Treasury Wine Estates and smaller independent winemakers throughout Victoria.

“The wet spring was terrible,” Mr Vaughan said.

Mrs Vaughan said that had delayed the harvest by about two weeks – to late March/early April – “which isn’t great”.

“But you can’t change the weather,” she said.

“It’s been a challenging season so far because of the wet weather and the humidity.”

 Mr Vaughan said a run of warmer weather would speed up the ripening process, with a caveat.

“What tends to happen is the hours of sun are getting less, so the warmth is getting less and dull weather is not helping,” he said.

“What we need is sunshine and no rain.”

Mrs Vaughan said about 30 workers would be needed for the harvest.

“We’re hoping to get back a lot of the workers we had last year but we’re probably also going to look at backpackers, because the majority of the vineyards will be harvesting at the same time – there’s a little bit of staggering but in the main we’ll be at the same time.

But there’s some good news for wine lovers – Cobboboonee is still planning to open a cellar door at the vineyard, plans the Vaughans had when they bought the beautiful property from Alistair and Alice Taylor in 2021.

“The wheels are in motion,” Mrs Vaughan said.

“We’ve spoken with (Glenelg Shire Council) and hoping to proceed.

“Our goal is to open it by Christmas.”