Tuesday, October 28, 2008

This week 24th October 2008

Weather Report Week Ending 24/10/08
Maximum Temperature for the week 32.4C (90F) on Sat. 5 readings above our monthly average of 20.5C.
Minimum Temperature for the week 5.3C (41F) on Mon. 3 readings above our monthly average of 8.0C.
Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rainfall recorded.
Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Yet again no rainfall recorded this week. We had 2 very warm days this week with very low humidity's, around 3% on Friday being the lowest.

This week in the vineyard:
Sorry I do not have a photo this week - I have been out on the tractor as much as I can, getting our cover crop sprayed off. I am doing this to try to preserve as much moisture in our soil as I can. I am a little bit late this year, I suspect there is not a whole lot of moisture left for me to preserve, but hopefully we will still be getting some more rain that can be caught in the profile. The very low humidity's that we recorded this week have also seen us lose a lot of the available moisture we did have there. We have had a small increase in our water allocation this week, we now have 15% available to use out of the Murray River.
This past week I attended a seminar being held by Dr. Fearne (Adelaide's current thinker in residence, just finishing up). He has been looking at how the wine industry in particular can achieve maximum benefit from our value chains. The message I got was that we need to get to know our consumers a lot better, to be able better serve their needs and this will also help our retailers market our wine. Sounds good, but it will need more grape growers to become a lot more involved in the marketing of their wine, something we have not had to do in the past.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

An interesting thought proposal. As a consumer I have a lot of loyalty to the 'few' winemakers I have met over the years. Meeting the maker activities also need to be very targeted to avoid the masses and at the same time attract enough buyers of cases of wine.

Good luck on the rain front, we should ship rain back in the empties form London :)