GIVEN everything local grape growers have gone through these past six months, you’d think it’s a victory there’ll be any wine at all coming out of Australia’s premier cool climate region.

But there will be, and it seems winemakers are itching to get their hands on the grapes.

That won’t be yet – but it will be soon.

Local grape growers are in the middle of a harvest they expect to have completed by Easter.

That’s a bit later than usual, but it’s a minor miracle given what they’ve had to battle.

The chief enemy has been the La Nina weather pattern, the cooler and wetter spring and summer adding grapes to a list of crops that haven’t found the going easy.

Those issues were well canvassed in the Observer in February but back then they were just looking for a clear run to the harvest.

While that didn’t quite happen, their harvests aren’t too dissimilar to last year.

Cobboboonee Vineyard’s Larry Vaughan, who owns the Heywood property with wife Angela, said he was expecting about 65 tonnes of pinot gris and pinot meuniere, about the same as last year.

“After the hard year, it’s pretty good actually,” he said.

“It’s been a very clean crop and that’s the main thing.

“If the weather holds up, transport’s organised and the winemakers are happy.”

 Cobboboonee has employed about 19 pickers for the harvest, eight of which are backpackers, the remainder locals.

North west of Cobboboonee is Jack and Lois Doeven’s Drumborg property where Mr Doeven expects the harvest will be in the “low 60s” tonne range, also about the same as last year.

“It would have been better if we hadn’t had that storm (a hailstorm in November),” he said.

And then there were 10 of 12 days after Wood, Wine and Roses where it rained.

On top of that, the pinot gris has been a target for birds.

“The silvereyes have never been worse,” Mr Doeven said.

“I reckon we’ve lost five per cent of this crop.”

But all up, the weather was the main culprit.

“We had La Nina and there was just too much wet weather,” he said.

“Our climate seems to be getting more variable. The storm came out of the south 10 days before summer and we’ve never had storms from that direction except in winter time.”

The wet weather after Wood, Wine and Roses (late February-early March) was also unusual and led to botrytis developing.

“We’ve had to go through half the vineyard vine by vine by vine ad cut out those bunches as they appear – if you miss one next week there’ll be 10-12 bunches around it affected.

“Of 33 vintages I’d say it’s been the most difficult year out of all of them- we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next.”

And the issue was made worse by demand for local grapes.

“We could’ve sold this crop three times over,” Mr Doeven said.

“There’s a growing awareness of the wine that comes from the Henty wine region.

“One guy in Geelong says they can’t get enough of the Henty wine region in Sydney – many parts of Australia are struggling with grape prices – we’re not.

“We’ve just got to be able to grow the stuff.”

Mrs Doeven said the vineyard had about 25-30 pickers for the harvest, most of them local.

“Some of them have other work as well and we try and accommodate everyone like that,” she said.

The harvest was expected to be finished next Thursday, after which would be the annual tradition of an after-harvest party.