The drought of the past year has come on top of a succession of dry years.

That had forced them to consider innovative ways not only to make their vines less reliant on water but also to maintain grape quality.

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Water availability, Chambers Rosewood's Stephen Chambers said, was "one of the most obvious issues" when making wine during a drought.

Irrigation had only been in place at the winery since the end of the 1990s and even then, Mr Chambers said, they always took "a conservative view" to how much water was used.

"Our approach always allowed the vines to shoot at the beginning of the season and to reach their natural balance as dictated by the prevailing conditions and then to irrigate to maintain the canopy after this point," he said.

"It is interesting to note that this is now a recommended approach by many in the industry."

The overarching thinking was a drought was always "just around the corner".

"In the winery, we do collect rainwater run-off from the roofs of our building with this being used at times during the year."

For Cofield Wines' Damien Cofield, the pressure of drought meant the issue at hand was quantity rather than quality.

Mr Cofield said a natural outcome of drought was reduced yields, which became a compounding problem in a run of dry years.

"As a business, we have been experiencing strong growth, so there is pressure to keep up when yield and sales are charting in different directions," he said.

"We are permanently tweaking our approach every growing season - canopy management, water management, crop thinning if necessary, sunscreen applications to counter extreme heat.

"Longer-term we need to manage our water allocation astutely."

In 2019, that resulted in the winery beginning a major upgrade of its irrigation infrastructure, a project that would continue for a couple of years.

The pressures placed on winemakers in the region had been considerable.

But they had also been pleasantly surprised by the robust and forgiving nature of their vines to the scarcity of water.

Nick Brown, of All Saints Estate and St Leonards Vineyard, said Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon had shined despite the dry.

At Chambers Rosewood, Mr Chambers said his muscat and tempranillo were doing extremely well.

Mr Brown said considerable time was spent managing water efficiently, to ensure all irrigation systems were making the most of the restricted water available

"This has included the recent upgrade of 30 kilometres of under-vine dripper tube which was of considerable expense," he said.

"Due to the restricted allocation of water I am starting to allocate more water to my favourite children, for example, higher-value varieties."