Australian vineyards – not that hot actually

I am sitting in my office looking out of the window into the freshly pruned Tiers Vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley. Behind the vineyard the tall white trunks of the candle-bark gums (Eucalyptus rubida) are rhythmically swaying in the increasing wind. The sky is growing dramatically darker as we await the arrival of a Great Southern Ocean cold front. Three weeks after the winter solstice, this is one of these often-ferocious fronts that deliver the rain upon which we rely to leach last year’s salts...