Under the weather

At the start of this year, award-winning NSW winemaker Jason Brown was anticipating his best season yet, with outstanding crops of Chardonnay and Shiraz grapes. ”I was looking at the very best Shiraz I’ve ever produced,” he says. ”We just needed it to continue ripening to develop flavour.” And then came the rain and, with it, the washout of all his hopes for a record-breaking vintage. For while the Chardonnay was happily harvested before the sluicing rain drenched vast areas of southern NSW, including his Hilltops Moppity Vineyards at Young, the fragile Shiraz was still on the vine, waiting for some elusive sunshine to finish it off, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.