Rutherglen's vintage strong

Winemakers of Rutherglen president Wendy Killeen said on Monday that the 2015 vintage had gone extremely well.

Her comments follow the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia revelation this week that the nation’s 2015 vintage crush was 1.67 million tonnes.

The federation said this was marginally lower than the seven-year average and slightly down on last year’s 1.7 million tonne estimate and 2013’s high of 1.83 million tonnes.

But Mrs Killeen said Rutherglen was different to most other areas in that it was not a big growing region.

Ms Killeen is also chief executive of Stanton and Killeen, which was hit hard by the severe frost of October, 2013.

“We lost 90 per cent of our 75 acre vineyard, they went black within hours,” she said

“It was quite devastating. After you have a frost your vines are severely affected, it takes a good one to two years to come back on track.”

But Ms Killeen said they were very happy with the recovery into this year.

“Our yields were down on a normal year, but it’s really hard to say what a normal year is now anyway,” she said.

“In 2011 we had heavy, heavy rain, which made for an awful growing season.

"Then we’ve had rain and heatwaves, so each year for the past few years we’ve had some sort of event that has upset the normal pattern.

“But this year, on the back of the frost, our yields were up but perhaps down for some other winemakers.”

Ms Killeen said that Chris Pfeiffer from Pfeiffer Wines, for example, told her some of his grape bunches had come in smaller and earlier this year because of the past season’s early heat.

“Our fruit quality was fantastic and we felt we did very well out of 2015,” she said.

“And the wines that we’ve made are full of flavour. The muscats are the best we’ve grown in five years and that’s a general feeling across the region.”

Ms Killeen said lower yields across the nation were not such a bad result “because there has been a glut for too long”.