Old Myths

There are many “myths” surrounding the optimal growth of grapevines for wine. Older vines make better wine than young vines. A lower yielding vine will produce a more intense wine. The longer and slower the ripening of the berries, the better. The riper, the greater. Etc.. Some of these thoughts originate in Europe and there they have alot of experience, historically, they even allowed some of these ideas to influence rules governing the growth of grapevines for winemaking in France with regards to labelling! Since the inception of arakoon wines we have brought in grapes from vines that have yielded miserably and from vines that have had reasonably large crops, from vines that were two years young up to close to one hundred years old, from vines that have ripened their fruit early and late, and with varying degrees of ripeness (10.5 to over 16% potential alcohol!). In Summary, the best wine so far (doyen) have come from two year old vines that ripened early. We have seen examples where low yielding vines produce wine that is not too special, whilst reasonably high yielding vines have given us very nice fruit (and therefore wine).

Not only is there a substantial difference between the environment in Europe and that of Australia, which results in great differences between our wines, but it is always possible to find examples to contradict (or “disprove”) these “rules”. Albeit, we nevertheless believe that there are good reasons to keep some of these “myths” in our minds, whilst remembering the most important principle of all; every vineyard, every year and every grape variety is unique and will very likely differ from what we think we can predict!