Yarra Valley loses $8m fruit

More than AUS$8m of fruit was lost during the 2009 heatwave and bushfires in the Yarra Valley.

Tony Jordan, president of the Yarra Valley Winegrowers Association, estimates the region lost around 4000 tonnes of fruit, valued at $2000 per tonne.

Jordan played down the short harvest. ‘A fall of 25% is a blow but is within the range of year-to-year variation that we might expect to see,’ he said.

Producers in the region say January’s four-day heatwave was to blame for most of the crop loss, with February’s fires damaging just 4% of the Valley’s 3800ha of vineyard.

‘The greatest losses were down to the heat spike. Only 30 vineyards suffered fire damage. Vineyards did get burned – mainly singed by grass fires – but 85% of the all the vines hit will recover within 2 years,’ Jordan added.

Three small wineries were destroyed by fire.

Written by Rebecca Gibb

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Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).