A year of big crops and very forward, fruity wines, with rich flavours but lacking backbone and length.  Higher pH’s, especially in Chardonnay.  Therefore, not so much wines to keep, but very good current drinking.

Very good.  Great balance of rain and warmth right through growing season.  Wines of good colour, low pH musts and ample phenols.  Elegant wines of good keeping qualities.

Cool spring, summer. Late budburst and harvest.  Elegant wines, lacking a little weight in chardonnays and reds but elegant sauvignon blancs.

‘El Nino’.  A very dry and windy spring and a dry, dry summer and autumn.  Wines of intense flavour and colour that are very slow developers.

Very good.  Early budburst, a dry spring and warm weather until late March.  Heavy rain and strong winds in early April, but very clean crops and wines with good colour, fruit flavours and length.

Wines of bigger weight, higher phenol and extract levels than 1980.  Slower developers with generally lower pH’s.  A wet winter in 1980 followed by an early budburst and flowering and a warm summer, but a cool, unsettled picking season.