A wetter than usual winter followed by a mild summer and a hot, dry March has produced a grape crop that promises to produce some stunning wines.

Ian Watson of Tomboy Hill Wines is a member of the Ballarat and District Vignerons Association. He says this year is strikingly similar to a Burgundian vintage, the French wine region which closely resembles Ballarat’s in climate and altitude.

He says this year’s late vintage stands in contrast to the past few years when winemakers were forced to harvest and bottle in February.

“We’re looking at a mid-to-late April harvest,” Mr Watson says.

“The pinot noir is looking very good indeed; it’s a very large crop and the grapes are very strong.”

He says the chardonnay crop is still looking a little ‘hen and chicken’ – a term referring to the development of some grapes to full size while others remain small.

This week’s rain has come too late to affect those crops which are already at full bloom, and will only assist those which have not matured to come on.

Mr Watson says unless there was a repeat of the 2011 rains, where torrential downpours caused havoc, any wet weather now will be welcome unless it impedes picking.

At Eastern Peake vineyard underneath Mt Beckworth, winemaker Owen Latta displays the characteristic caution of a farmer who’s seen things go well until the last moment, but he’s still enthusiastic for this year’s potentially strong vintage.

He says while everything points to 2017 have some truly great wines, he will not say it’s a brilliant year until the wines are being drunk.

“You can say what you think, but I would suggest you shouldn’t be too over-confident until the wine is in the bottle – and then it is out of the bottle and being drunk and enjoyed,” says Mr Latta, who makes several varieties including heritage wine types.

Matthew Barry of Mt Avoca Winery in the Pyrenees says his outlook is the best for over a decade.

“This is really a throwback to the old days: warm but dry in March, and I guess that cool summer – we had probably more warm days in March than we had in January or February, which is kind of crazy. But the quality is looking fantastic, the vineyard’s never looked better.

“We had a lot of rain last winter and spring and this is the first time in in decades our dam has been full, and it's almost full now at the end of summer, which is really quite amazing.

Read an extensive interview about winemaking with Matthew Barry in The Weekender pages 32-33.