The 2025 vintage broke records for the earliest start and the earliest finish to a harvest ever here at Pfeiffer Wines. The growing season saw below average Spring rainfall, dotted with a couple of rainfall events in late November and early December, around flowering. Summer proved to be hot and dry, with multiple days in January and February reaching temperatures above 40C, with minimum night time temperatures of around 25C.
Despite early irrigations from September onwards, yields were down, up to 50% in some blocks, with an overall average of 20% across our vineyards.
The combination of the warm and dry conditions, and the lower yields saw the rapid onset of ripening, with the first fruit picked, our Sunday Creek Chardonnay on 5th February, 2 days earlier than 2007 (the peak of the drought). The continued warm days and nights saw vintage progress at a rapid pace, with lots of pressure on winery infrastructure, with many varieties ripening at the same time. The fast pace continued right to the end of vintage on 1st April, with our Sunday Creek Muscadelle for Topaque completing the vintage.
The conditions of the vintage has seen very good fruit quality across most varieties, with very low disease pressure. The warmer conditions have seen great colours and richness develop in our red varieties, being particularly strong in our Durif and Shiraz wines. The fortified varieties have also performed very strongly, particularly our Muscats and Portuguese varieties for our port style wines, which is very exciting and holds great promise for the future.
