A string of cold and frosty mornings has led to crop losses in some of Australia’s biggest wine regions. In South Australia's Barossa Valley, temperatures have dipped as low as minus-four degrees in the past week and growers are bracing for another cold snap with more frost warnings issued for the coming days.
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00:00Last Thursday was devastating enough, losing most probably 20% of our area.
00:08Last night, most probably in excess of 50% of our area has now been damaged and still
00:14bracing for another six weeks of this type of weather going forwards while it's being
00:18so dry.
00:19As soon as they've been frosted, the crop will be reduced by about 50% or greater, but
00:24the vines will survive, so it is about putting the vines into a bit of a caretaker mode,
00:28I suppose, for the next six months for the ones that are being frosted, and then hopefully
00:34the vintage after.
00:35But looking after the vines is primarily my concern at the moment.
00:38I've made heaps of preparations.
00:40I've invested quite heavily into infrastructure with frost fans, so they do do a job.
00:48But when you're talking extremes of temperatures down to minus four, they're not going to work
00:53to, I suppose, the efficiency, you're just moving cold air.
00:57So the whole idea is to break that aversion air down and bring that warmer air down onto
01:02your vineyard.
01:03So they're quite effective up to about minus two, even down to minus three sometimes.
01:07But when you're looking at minus four, it gets pretty difficult, and that's what we
01:12experienced last night.
01:14It's just the dryness of the air, the cold weather snap, slightly earlier bud burst,
01:19so we're experiencing, I suppose, growth earlier than what we normally would.
01:23And also full moon is also around that time.
01:26It just gets all the moisture out of the air and makes it a very triple whammy, so to speak.