Hi, my name is Suzy Rogiers, I am a research scientist with the New South Wales Department
of Primary Industries and I recently presented at the Chardonnay workshop that was held in
Orange.
We discussed some of Chardonnay's unique features such as early budburst and thus its susceptibility
to frost.
We found that relative to nine other varieties grown under the same conditions in a warm
climate and under drip irrigation that its vigour was intermediate.
We raised the point that Chardonnay is not too bad at maintaining its water status and
relative to other varieties is intermediate in its water use.
As a whole we know that Chardonnay is not particularly sensitive and it's quite an adaptable
variety.
It originates from Burgundy but its adaptability is why it is grown so widely - from cool to
warm to very warm regions, and in a range of soil types.
And this is one of the reasons why we can produce so many styles of Chardonnay.
We discussed this variety's susceptibility to powdery mildew, I certainly saw plenty
of that last spring and also the importance of promoting vine health by allowing the vine
to replenish its carbohydrate reserves.
Adequate Carbon reserves will also encourage better fruit set.
However, sunny days with high photosynthesis at flowering is a very important prerequisite
for good fruit set.
Vines also require a suite of nutrients to grow properly and to ripen berries.
Potassium is particularly important because it is the most predominant cation in the berry,
at about 80% of all the cations.
Potassium is essential to many processes occurring in the plant and the berry and we must ensure
that the vine is never grown in a Potassium deficient situation.
Low Potassium can result in slow and uneven ripening.
High Potassium in the must can lead to higher pH because Potassium binds with tartaric acid
to form Potassium bitrate crystals during fermentation and within the bottle during
the aging process.
The formation of these crystals also reduces the tartrate to malate ratio and this has
an impact on malolactic fermentation.
And this will alter the flavour profile of the wine and this may good or bad depending
on what style you are trying to create.
Many Australian soils are naturally abundant in Potassium, however each site is different
and soil pH can have an effect on its availability.
Soil and petiole testing in your site will help you to determine if you are in the deficient,
adequate or luxury range.
Thanks for listening and till next time.
Hello Mark Rowley here, senior industry analyst from Wine Australia.
I'm here in chilly Orange talking about Chardonnay.
My finding today were that Australia has a role to lead in global Chardonnay, we are
the third biggest producer and Orange is an important part of promoting Australian Chardonnay
and more premium Chardonnay at that.
If you are looking for more information on the wine industry in general, I encourage
you to sign up to our newsletter, our weekly market bulletin.
And also if you need more specific information feel free to contact me directly.
I'm Dr Mike McCarthy principal scientist - viticulture, with the South Australian Research and Development
Institute or SARDI.
I'm actually based in the Barossa, where I also try and run my own vineyard.
The wines we have been showing today have come from a project that has been nicknamed
the clones for climate change project.
What we are trying to do within this project is look at the influence of clones and also
trying to use existing differences in climate across regions as a surrogate for climate
change.
In other words, what we are saying is if we can take clones of both Shiraz and Chardonnay
from a range of regions, make those wines under identical conditions, put those wines
through full sensory profiling, can we get to understand what influence a warmer climate
in fifty years time might do in terms of how the wines from an existing region might change
into the future.
And the aim is at the end of the experiment we will take all the sensory data, all the
climate data we have generated from those sites and say well look, if site x warms up
to become more like a current site of the same temperature, we will get some insight
into how wine styles might change into the future as those individual sites warm.
Hi, I'm Nick Dry from Yalumba Nursery.
I'm here in Orange today talking about Chardonnay clones and how we can use them to help manage
vineyards and make more interesting and complex wines.
For further information check out our website www.yalumbanursery.com
I'm Bruno Holzapfel from New South Wales DPI, I am a research scientist and I recently presented
at the Chardonnay workshop on nutrition, where we talked about the nutrient cycle and how
it related to grape production and where it influences the final juice composition.
So if you want any more details we will soon have the Primefact on our website on that
topic.