In hopeful signs for next year's vintages, wine growers in South Australia and NSW say the fires may have come too early for ripening fruit to be tainted by smoke flavours
This summer's savage bushfire season has burnt out over 1000 hectares of Australia's vineyards, killed hundreds of livestock and destroyed thousands of kilometres of farm fences, adding more stress and heartache for agricultural industries already battling years of drought.
Even the bees are struggling - 64 tonnes of sugar have been planted in NSW's fire-ravaged eucalypt forests to assist apiarists with this year's honey yield. Christina Tulloch, the president of the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association, said local vineyards had fruit on the vines with developing colour a little earlier than usual because of the drought. Growers would have a better idea about how the smoke exposure would affect quantity and quality when they harvested in January.
“The consequences for biosecurity and animal welfare are significant. It’s a challenge to contain the animals, stop them wandering to other properties and National Parks, and to keep them fed.
“The big thing we’ve found in the past couple of years, probably because of climate change, these natural disasters are just coming one on top of the other. It’s just happening so often and our resources are being stretched.” “And then we’ve got about an acre that is black, and the rest is somewhere between alive and dead. If it’s OK, it will probably take until vintage 2022 to bear fruit. We’ve essentially lost the production for this year and next year.”
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