Canberra District Wine – Vintage 2020 Update

Canberra District Wine – Vintage 2020

The Canberra District Wine industry has become the hottest cool climate in Australia since our first vines were planted in the early 70s. Our unique Geographical Indication spans both Southern NSW and the ACT. It certainly has been a challenging season for us with drought, fires, smoke and hail but we are resilient and innovative, and we appreciate the support of our community during the last few months.

It’s important to remember at this stage that the Canberra District is a large area and there are many factors to consider when making a decision on whether grapes will be harvested in 2020. The impact of smoke is varied across our district, initial smoke taint test reports indicate that each area within our district are receiving vastly different levels of smoke taint results, and as several wineries are still going through the smoke testing process, we still don’t have a clear picture of the level of damage to the whole district just yet.

The decision to not harvest in 2020 has already been made by a number of individual wineries in consultation with their winemakers and reinforces their own and our region’s ethos of premium quality wines that represent the unique terroir that is Canberra District wines. We take our responsibility to lovers of Canberra wine seriously and we have taken steps to ensure the highest standards of quality and integrity is evident in the instance that wine is made in 2020.

This prospective lack of vintage 2020 provides us an opportunity to be very excited about the release of the district’s 2019 red wines, knowing that 2019 was one of the best vintages on record. Our ‘19 wines, and those from the ’17 and ’18 vintages will become the highlight of 2020, and it’s these wines that we invite you all to buy, drink and savour.

If people want to help, please buy a bottle of Canberra wine, either from a winery directly or at your local bottle-shop or restaurant, the vital message we want to convey is to come and visit us, we are still here and open for business. We are pleased with the support from the many public and government agency promotional campaigns recently released, to encourage initially our domestic tourists and also our international guests to come back and visit us in the Canberra District.

Now more than ever, it’s time to #loveNSW and #HolidayHereCbr