Vintage Archives - Brokenwood Wines

Three photos; purple grapes in someone's hand, harvested grapes, foamy red juice

Vintage 2026 – Update #2

Hello All,

Almost three weeks have passed since my last vintage update, and it has been a busy start to vintage. With the stable weather forecast for the rest of the week, this will be one of the earliest and compact vintages in my time at Brokenwood.

All our Hunter Chardonnay was off by the 14th of January and Kat and Fletch kept rolling straight into Semillon. Chardonnay yields are down across the Hunter due to wind at flowering but the juice that we now have in barrel fermenting tastes promising.

We finished picking the whites from Oakey Creek Vineyard on Saturday 24/1 and the last Semillon came in on Friday 30/1. Across the Valley, Semillon yields are above average with some blocks bettering the high yields of 2025. We harvested 71.5T of Semillon from Oakey Creek compared to 70.1t in 2025, this would have been even higher if not for the hail we had in Spring.

Despite the almost 100mm rain that fell the week of 11/1, the juice in tank has excellent colour and flavour and the first of them are starting to come out of ferment this week. The wines will likely be a little fuller than the last few years due to the warm, dry season but the best of the Single Vineyards will have classic capacity for aging. At this stage, the highlights look to be Oakey Creek and the 1899 Old Vines, in their 127th year.

The warm weather over the Australia Day weekend coupled with a lighter crop on the Shiraz has pushed sugar levels up relatively quickly. We started picking Shiraz Thursday last week and we won’t really stop now until it is all off the vines. Fruit condition is excellent, with near perfect sugar levels but the heat has certainly taken its toll on yield. The dry conditions over Spring have resulted in smaller than average berry size and therefore lower bunch weights. We made a start on Tallawanta Shiraz last Friday, with Vegas and the best blocks of Verona coming off on Saturday. A Southerly buster came though on Sunday night with some localised storms across the Valley, we received around 7mm at the winery which freshened things up a little and cooled everything down. This week’s milder weather has been welcome, as it has allowed tannins to catch up to the sugar level in few blocks. All going to plan there won’t be any Shiraz on the vine by the end of this week.

It has been incredibly hot in Southern Australia this past week. Irrigation has been critical to maintain vine health. I visited Beechworth yesterday, whilst dry the vineyard has held up well in the heat. Fruit condition is good and sugar levels are coming on but we are still about 7-10 days away from harvest. McLaren Vale is still about 4 weeks away from our harvest starting.

Until next update.

— Stuart Hordern (Chief Winemaker)

Three photos; green grapes in someone's hand, harvesting grapes, and purple grapes on the vine

Vintage 2026 – Update #1

Hello All,

A belated Happy New Year to everyone, I hope that you had a good Christmas with friends and family.

Up to the 31st of December 2025 we received almost bang on 1000mm of rainfall at Brokenwood, which is almost 250mm above our long-term average of 752mm. Despite the high rainfall, most of it fell before the end of August which resulted in a full soil moisture profile and a later than average budburst. Some lovely dry early Spring weather was welcomed but it did not last. The traditional August winds arrived in force in early September and have hung around since. Constant wind made for a relatively challenging growing season as it dried things out relatively quickly, flowering was impacted and it also made our Vineyard Team’s job a little trying as windows to get into the vineyards became difficult to find. Despite all of this, the vines were in good condition with dry weather meaning minimal disease pressure.

A localised hailstorm in the first week of November impacted Oakey Creek but thankfully not our Single Vineyard Shiraz vineyards. Both November and December were hotter and drier than average but Katrina Barry (Vineyard Manager) and Fletch did a great job of managing the heat with irrigation and timely applications of sunscreen. There was a couple of anxious days with the Hunter being clouded in bushfire smoke in the lead up to Christmas but thankfully some timely rain put this to bed.

Coming into mid-January fruit condition and canopy are excellent, though tracking 7-10 days earlier than average. The last fortnight has been hot which pushed ripening along at rapid pace, it was looking like an incredibly fast paced vintage. Pokolbin received 35mm on Sunday night which was welcome. It has freshened up the vines and slowed things down a little, this is of particular value to the Shiraz which is still a couple of weeks away from being ready.

We picked our first fruit off Oakey Creek on Friday 9th of January and will have all the Chardonnay off Oakey Creek by Wednesday morning. We will roll straight into Semillon which is coming on quickly and there is more rain forecast for later in the week.

At this stage, yields look to be below 2025 but still around average.

The forecast for the coming week is much cooler with the chance of a shower or two. A little rain will not be an issue as the fruit is in excellent condition and will make scheduling a little calmer and the vintage cru’s baptism of fire a little milder.

Both Beechworth and McLaren Vale have had a drier than average year, with a particularly warm and dry summer. Fruit condition is excellent, and I expect to make a start in Beechworth in early February and McLaren Vale not until March. I will keep everyone updated as we get closer.

This year’s visiting vintage cru is made up of:

Sam Higgins: South Australian lad, second vintage.
Fraser Cameron: South Australian lad, seventh vintage.
Clemence Potier: French girl, sixth vintage
Jesslyn Collins: aka Brains 2026: Canadian/South Australian. Fourth year Oenology student. Second vintage.
Nicola Barnes: Sydney girl, first vintage.

In the meantime, keep your fingers and toes crossed for a continuation of this mild weather so we make the most of what has the capacity to be an excellent 2026 harvest.

— Stuart Hordern (Chief Winemaker)

Vintage 2025 – Update #2

That’s a wrap on #Vintage2025!

Eight weeks have passed since my last vintage update, and it speaks to the intensity and compaction of the season. As of today (Monday 31/3/25), all our fruit is in the winery.

It has been a relatively intense vintage, albeit shorter than average. As I have previously mentioned, the timing of Easter is usually a major driver of our season. In an average year, the last of our fruit tends to come in just before Easter. Easter falls in late April this year, yet despite this, we had most of our fruit off a month prior. In addition to the early harvest, yields across all growing areas are well up. Many blocks here in the Hunter, along with our external regions, were carrying between 30% and 50% more fruit than average. This made a very intense late January/early February in the winery. Kate, Lorrae, Hayden and the whole Winery Cru handled this well, and the results of their effort will be evident when our 2025 wines are released.

We have had 296mm of rain here at the winery for the year, with the majority falling in late January/early February. Twenty-four of the first 47 days of 2025 were rain days. This made ripening our later blocks of Shiraz a challenge. The rain came on the back of a historically dry growing season, with only 227mm falling up from July 1 through to December 31. The dry growing season (along with Kat & Fletch’s hard work) had the vineyard in excellent condition in the lead-up to harvest.

Despite the rain, Semillon once again showed why it does so well in the Hunter. We have now classified our Semillons, and the results are very pleasing. We will have a complete make of Hunter Valley Semillon and at least four separate Single Vineyard wines. Oakey Creek and Tallawanta are the top picks at this stage. The season indeed appeared to favour Oakey Creek and the southern end of Pokolbin, with it ripening earlier than most of our other Semillon vineyards and managing to dodge the worst of any localised hail. There is genuine excitement around the valley in the quality of the Semillons from 2025, with the wines displaying great fruit weight and natural chemistry. One very experienced, well-known producer commented to me “they just have the look.” The best of them will develop wonderfully over time.

Almost all our Shiraz came in at around 12.8-13.5 Baume. Despite the lower sugar levels, the fruit has fantastic colour from the dry growing season. Shiraz across the valley had above-average yields, and once again, the importance of fruit thinning was evident. The blocks carrying our historical average of 1.5-1.8t/acre came in early with good flavour and concentration but blocks carrying a heavier crop struggled to get over the line with the wet conditions. At this stage, the best Hunter Valley reds are Graveyard End, Verona East & West, Tallawanta, and Mistress. The wines are all tucked away in barrel and have almost all completed malolactic fermentation. While it is early days, the reds have great colour and are classic medium-weight Hunter Valley Shiraz.

There was no chance for a break before Beechworth as Hayden, Chis and Chip headed down in early February. It has been an excellent season at Indigo Vineyard. We have the rare double of both high quality and yield! It has been a dry, hot summer in Beechworth, but fruit quality is the best that I have seen since 2016. The highlight, as always, is our Indigo Chardonnay, but the Pinot Noir and Tempranillo also show real promise.

It has been the earliest harvest on record in McLaren Vale, coming off an incredibly dry growing season. Yields were variable, with Block 2 Shiraz being well up (following several years of reduced yields as we re-worked the vineyard to manage grapevine trunk disease), Rayner Vineyard Shiraz was around average, whilst Wade Merlot was down by around 40%. Despite this variation, both Wade Block 2 and Rayner Vineyard are of their usual high quality and, again, in good volumes.

Above-average yields have been a feature of the season. This has given us the opportunity to once again take in a small parcel of fruit from Forest Edge. Although securing fruit from this vineyard has been a little sporadic over the last few years, it has consistently produced award-winning Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, so it is exciting to have this fruit back in the cellar for 2025.

All in all, it’s been a quality harvest with good volumes. At this stage, the early highlights are the Single vineyard Semillons and our Indigo Vinyard wines. The Vineyard and Winery Cru will now catch our breath and look forward to a few days off over Easter.

Cheers,

— Stuart Hordern (Chief Winemaker)

The team posing in front of processing machinery

Vintage 2025 – Update #1

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that you had a good Christmas with friends and family!

Let’s start with a recap of 2024…

Up to December 31st, 2024, we received 799mm of rainfall at Brokenwood, which is almost 50mm above our long-term average of 752mm. Despite the slightly above-average year, the fallen rain has been almost perfectly timed. We started the growing season with a full soil moisture profile, which, combined with an intensive nutrition program, resulted in good early canopy growth and a healthy crop. Timely rain throughout the growing season meant that we ended Spring with the vines in excellent condition. December was both drier and warmer than average, but Hunter Vineyard Manager Katrina Barry, alongside Chris Fletcher and the Vineyard Team, did a great job of managing the heat with irrigation and timely applications of sunscreen.

Now onto 2025

Coming into the new year, fruit condition and canopy were excellent despite the dry start to summer. Fruit was in pristine condition, though tracking 10-14 days earlier than average. The last 10 days have been relatively wet, with over 110mm falling since January 7th, which has slowed ripening down a little, which is not a bad thing, especially considering how early vintage was looking. The rain was initially welcome to freshen up the vines, particularly the Shiraz, which is still a couple of weeks away from being ready. We survived an intense, well-publicised storm last Wednesday evening, which we came out of relatively unscathed. There were several branches down in front of the original cellar door, but no hail and our power remained connected which was a relief.

We picked our first fruit off Oakey Creek on Friday, January 10th, and have since picked most of the Chardonnay and the best blocks of Semillon over the past week. We also picked the Drayton’s 1899 Old Vines Semillon last week, with the juice from these 126-year-old vines looking quite special.

So far, we have harvested 105 tonnes, mainly from Oakey Creek. Yields are well up on last year, this is due to a combination of a favourable season but also the investment and hard work since purchasing the property in 2021. Despite the relatively challenging weather over the last 10 days, yield and quality are high, and the juices have good flavour and chemistry. We will have finished our Oakey Creek whites on Thursday and the last of the Semillon is scheduled to be picked early next week, weather permitting.

The forecast for this week is much more stable, with warm, dry weather, which is exactly what the Doctor ordered. It will help dry things out and finish ripening the remaining whites and Shiraz.

Both Beechworth and McLaren Vale have had a drier-than-average year, with a particularly warm and dry summer. The fruit condition is excellent, and I expect to make a start in Beechworth in early February and McLaren Vale not until March. I will keep everyone updated as we get closer to starting.

The Vintage Cru have arrived (except for one lone Frenchman), completed their induction and have been on the tools since last Tuesday. Snorks, AKA the John Farnham of chefs, is back on the pans for what has become his annual “Farewell Vintage”. Mind you, I have written that for the last three years…

This year’s visiting Vintage Cru is made up of:

Charlie “Chis” Higgins: Chis returns for his second Brokenwood Vintage following on from 2024. He is taking a sabbatical from his Melbourne Uni law degree to run the Beechworth vintage for us.
Chip Curtis: Chip joins us all the way from Alabama USA, fourth vintage.
Finn Pannell: South Australian lad, family owns SC Pannell in McLaren Vale. Second year Oenology student. Seventh vintage.
Francesco Loi: Italian lad from Sicily, 10th vintage.
Zena Hudnott: Brains 2025: South Australian girl, fourth year Oenology student
Maxime Cloix: Frenchman, from outside of Bordeaux. Fifth vintage.

Please keep your fingers and toes crossed that this dry weather will continue so we can make the most of a high-quality 2025 harvest. Stay tuned for more vintage updates during the season.

Cheers,
– Stuart Hordern (Chief Winemaker)

Image – Vintage Cellar Hand Crew 2025. Left to Right; Stuart Hordern, David Rees, Lorrae St Vincent, Charlotte Lumby, Finn Pannell, Kate Sturgess (and Winston Sturgess), Maxime Cloix, Chip Curtis, Francesco Loi, Zena Hudnott, Charlie Higgins, Hayden Tinkler.

Vintage 2026 – Update #2

Vintage 2026 – Update #1

Vintage 2025 – Update #2

Vintage 2025 – Update #1

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