IT’S GETTING HOTTER AND HOTTER AND HO-

EVEN THE PLASTIC SCARE EAGLES ARE FALLING APART AS THEIR JOINTS MELT - "HE HUNG HIMSELF" SAID PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES HOOK, WINEMAKER OF LAZY BALLERINA AND VITICULTURE CONSULTANT AT DJS GROWERS.

Hell On Earth As Vintners Sweat

Winemakers Hold Their Breath

by PHILIP WHITE

Australia’s wine lake might well evaporate this afternoon.

Winemakers panicking about having their tanks full of unsold wine from the last two vintages may not need so much space for the 2009 crop: a lot of it’s frying as I write.

The wine in the refinery tanks will be stewing if they’re not properly refrigerated and/or insulated. After the terrible blast furnace conditions of 2008, most of that wine not yet sold should probably be used for fuel oil anyway.

Where I live on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, which is obviously surrounded by water, that ocean usually moderates the temperature. But thirty kilometres from here, down on the eastern flats at Strathalbyn, a householder has just reported a temperature of 54.5 degrees Celsius (130 degrees Fahrenheit) under the well-shaded back verandah of his old stone dwelling.

It’s 50C (122F) at Finniss, further down the peninsula.

This peninsula is covered in vineyards: intensive in some places, just speckled in others.

These had been just coming into veraison, when the grapes begin to colour. If the vines have sufficient leaf surviving in this huge toaster to properly feed and shade the berries, the colour will come just before the jam. Very quickly.

Great vintage for The Parkerilla.

Adelaide has just officially announced 45.7C (114F), which is close to its hottest recorded temperature of 46.1C (115F), on January 12^th., 1939.

Railway and tram tracks are buckling; rolling stock is stationary; bitumen roads melting; native birds panting desperately in the shade, and firemen muttering to themselves at their stations, The Look in their eyes.

The ocean is glassy onshore, yet way out at sea it’s violent.

Forecasters are saying these conditions will continue well into the next week.

The drier, more continental vignobles, like Clare, Barossa, and the poor old Murray Darling Basin and Murray Valley, will find it even harder.

Victoria, usually regarded as cooler climate viticulturally, is almost as bad as South Australia.

No viticulturer I’ve called will yet make a forecast of what all this will do to the quality of vintage 2009.

“Not yet”, they say.