BY all accounts, 2022 is going to be another good year for wine lovers. At least, where Western Victorian grapes are concerned.

Larry and Angela Vaughan are the new owners of the nine-hectare Cobboboonee Vineyard west of Heywood and looking forward to their first harvest. Naturally, they’re hoping for a good crop and great wine.

With the help of former owner Alistair Taylor “every step of the way”, the self-confessed grape-growing newbies plan to start harvesting before the end of February, weather permitting.

The Vaughans have missed a couple of bullets in the form of the two massively destructive hailstorms that hit Portland recently, and while they’ve had a lot of rain, it hasn’t hindered them unduly.

In the past two years the vineyard picked “about 83 and 86 tonnes respectively”, Mr Taylor said.

“So, we fared pretty well, and this year is shaping up to be similar.

“We had a lot of late summer/early autumn rainfall, and there was a lot of disease which needed spraying, and the same experience earlier last year, but it’s all looking pretty good at the moment.

“We’ll be starting to harvest in about two weeks, for the sparkling grapes. These are always picked greener than the rest; they have a higher acidity and less sugar and are always picked about two weeks earlier.

Cobboboonee’s grape varieties of chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot gris and pinot meunier supply several Victorian wineries and one in South Australia, including Lethbridge Wines, Jackson Brooke Wines, Seppelt’s Treasury Wines, Heroes Vineyard, Patrick Sullivan, and Sebastian Crowther Wines.

Out at Drumborg Vineyard, about ten minutes north-west of Heywood, Jack and Lois Doeven’s mostly white table wine grapes also brave the challenging conditions in Victoria’s Western District to provide the basis for some of Australia’s best aromatic cool-climate wines. Like Cobboboonee, the vineyard supplies Lethbridge Wines and Jackson Brooke, and also Provenance Wines and Basalt Wines.

Mr Doeven will never forget “the season from hell” two years ago, and although last year’s crop redeemed itself with close to average yields, it was also of “extraordinarily high quality” because of a very cool January.

“We’ve never had a season like last year. It stayed green the whole summer, which is so unusual here,” he said.

“In a year like that, it’s the winemakers who really reap the good harvest. They get exceptional quality wines, but we are paid per tonnage, so it was simply a good but average yield for us.

“The long-term result is that a quality yield like that does keep our winemakers happy.”

This year’s crop is also looking good, despite a “pretty damn hard spring’: very cold with a lot of rain, and water-logged and wind-affected vines causing delays in growth.

“However, it turned into a very good flowering and fruit-setting season during November.

“Since then, it’s been really good growing weather, apart from a bit of humidity in January. So, we’re expecting another very high quality crop.

“A lot will depend on the weather in early March, but I expect we’ll start picking in late March and early April.

“If we get through to the Labor Day weekend and it continues to be dry, we’re home and hosed.”

Picking requires a lot of coordination with the wineries and freight carriers to ensure the fruit is collected on the day it’s harvested. Luckily, neither of these winegrowers have to rely on backpackers to pick their grapes, given they are hard to find because of COVID-19. They generally only make up about 20 per cent of Mr Doeven’s pickers anyway, with most pickers coming from local areas such as Macarthur, Narrawong, Portland and Heywood for the four to six weeks of harvest.

“Our picking crew comes back year after year, so we’ve pretty much got our crew already.”

Mr Taylor also relies mostly on local pickers and can usually “just pick them up outside of the supermarket”.

“I generally need only need about 15–20 for the boutique wineries and don’t have any problems finding willing workers.”