Another year in the barrel, and what an interesting vintage it has been! 

The Spring of 2023 was warm and dry, and these conditions resulted in the formation of small berries and bunches for the 2024 vintage. A wet and cool December turned into a dry and warm January, and this, combined with the small berries, resulted in fast ripening fruit. We had ripe sugar and flavours very early, resulting in us beginning our harvest on January 8th with the picking of our Saxonvale Chardonnay. This was one of the earliest ever start dates in Margan’s nearly 30-year history. For comparison, in the 2023 vintage, we hadn’t even started picking Semillon until February. This year, by February, we had finished picking Semillon and we’re already well into picking our reds. As you can see, viticulture and winemaking are a very predictable business. 

As mentioned, these weather conditions resulted in noticeably smaller berries. The benefit to this is that you gain wonderful concentration of fruit and flavour. For example, our white wines from this vintage are already exhibiting great flavour and texture. As a counterpoint, they may not quite age as well as the 2023 whites, though they will be drinking exceptionally in their early life, and for many years due to their balance. The reds from this vintage have just finished their malolactic fermentation and are starting to soften in oak. Early signs show rich powerful wines across all varieties. Keep your eye out for these as they move from the barrel to bottle. 

Overall, the 2024 vintage conditions resulted in us being down approximately 20% in our yield of fruit. You’d always be happy to take more, though with the quality of fruit and flavour, we’re a glass half full here at Margan. We have enough of all our single vineyard White Label wines to make everything we love in a good year. That includes a few favourites that we don’t always see, including a single-vineyard Saxonvale Mourvedre, another exceptional vintage of Timbervines Shiraz and happy to say, our wonderful Botrytis will be returning this year! 

We look forward to sharing these amazing new wines with you. If you want to be amongst the first to get your hands on them, make sure you’re a member of our Wine Club to score yourself tickets to our White Label Lunch in May and our Sydney Spring Lunch in September. 

Cheers!

Andrew Margan