The season of 2015-16 is the season of early.  Early Flowering, early fruit set, early veraison and, of course, early harvest.  All early by the calendar, but the whole season seemed shunted forward.  October was the new November, December was the new January and so on and February saw much of the ripening through mild and quite autumnal days.

The end of March and early April has become, over the past 15 years, the normal time for harvesting at Bindi (which compares to the decade from 1991 to 2000 where we averaged mid April).  And the harvest is pretty much 110 to 115 days after the fruit set, which is normally at the end of November to early December.  In 2016 we again harvested between 100 and 115 days from harvest.  It’s just that starting the harvest on March 4th and ending March 10th is quite mind boggling and sets an early record well ahead of the previous set on March 17th in 2008!

And the quality, the style?  Well, at this early point the wines have great intensity, balance and length.  The winery was full of fine perfume as the Pinots fermented and the structures built with time on skins but overall the ferments were quite quick and exceptionally clean and easy.  At the very least it is a very good vintage.  I suspect as the wines fall bright and they evolve in barrel the vineyard definition and transparency will elevate and we may well be looking at another exceptional quality vintage to parallel the sublime 2015s.