Projects progress with vintage harvest
Like the rest of the WA wine industry, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development's wine research team have come off a fast and furious harvest, racking up 7,000 km by travelling to 59 different sample sites across the Margaret River and Great Southern wine regions!
The 2024 harvest saw the final vintage of winemaking activities for the provenance project and third full season of demonstrating the influence of Cabernet clones.
Project: Understanding the intricacies of provenance in Western Australian wine regions
This project aims to build on previous and upcoming works investigating how the variability of the elements (geology, soil and climate) can impact wine attributes within the Margaret River and Great Southern wine regions. The varieties of focus are Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon in Margaret River and Shiraz and Riesling in the Great Southern as these are the ‘hero’ varieties for their respective regions.
The first pick of Margaret River Chardonnay occurred on 18 January and the last Cabernet site was picked on 12 March. A total of 750 kg of fruit was harvested across the 38 different Margaret River sites.
The first pick of Great Southern (Frankland River) Riesling was on 7 February and the last Shiraz site (Porongurup) was on 14 March. In all, 380 kg of fruit was harvested from 19 Great Southern sites.
Funding for the Provenance project is received via the Wine Export Growth Partnership of which Wines of WA is a partner and supported by Margaret River Wine Association and Great Southern Wine Producers’ Association.
Project: Demonstrating how clonal selection can influence Cabernet Sauvignon wine quality
This project aims to understand the characteristics of 14 different clones and selections across multiple vintages, focusing on field performance and wine qualities. The WIN December 2022 newsletter describes this project in more detail.
The Margaret River trial block was established in 2019 onto grafted vines at the Howard Park Leston vineyard.
In the context of the previous 2 seasons, we observed a considerable advancement in vine growth and berry development from this season as shown in the table below. The dates show averages across the different clones and selections.
Comparison of vine growth and berrydevelopment between seasons | 2021-23 | 2023-24 |
| Budburst | 29 September | 3 October |
| Flowering | 3 December | 4 November |
| Veraison | 9 February | 9 January |
| Harvest | 8 April | 22 February |
The trial is part of a DPIRD collaboration with Howard Park Wines, Wines of WA, Wine Australia WAVIA and ARM Nursery.
All the 2024 trial wines are expected to be bottled by July this year, followed by chemical and sensory analysis, and featured in industry tastings based on the outputs of the respective projects.
For further information contact Richard Fennessy.