Trying to anticipate the weather gods, and the likelihood of weather forecasts to be accurate indicators of pending weather, can be a stressful task around vintage. Dave spends many hours poring over the weather websites, in an effort to get the grapes off at the best possible time.

It has been a pretty dry year, which has caused the vines a bit of stress (apparently good for flavour profiles as long as the vines don’t start to shut down). So it was with the forecast of an electrical storm, and a big dump of raining coming that we decided it was time to pick.

The baume readings were looking really good (slowly, but surely going up), so plenty of sugar and flavour in the grapes. We put a great team together – mostly friends and family who love a MOOMBAKI drop – and perfect weather ensued for a great day of picking. All up we picked the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec (for that lovely bordeaux style blend) and Shiraz in the one day.

Star of the day had to be our own 14 y.o. Nelson, who hauled the buckets all day and together with James emptied them into the picking bins, equating to handling around 7 1/2 tonnes of fruit!