Andrew Margan kicks off his '22 Hunter vintage with chardonnay

For Andrew Margan, his 2022 vintage began before daybreak on Monday as a machine harvester began taking an anticipated 20 tonnes of chardonnay grapes and a smaller amount of verdelho grapes from Margan's Saxonvale vineyard blocks.

Weather permitting, three of the four Saxonvale blocks of chardonnay will be picked by lunchtime Tuesday.

On Monday in the vineyard, Margan said, "Yesterday afternoon I just wandered through these blocks, trying to come up with a reason not to pick them. I couldn't find one. So that's all I need. Just the feeling that they need to be picked now. That they are going to make better wine now than they will tomorrow or the next day."

Half an hour later, after driving back to his winery just outside of Broke, to oversee the delivery of the first trailer of grapes, he took a sip of the first juice, and shared his thoughts.

"It's got a flavour profile there that I'm really looking for, which is white stonefruit, like a nectarine and white peach," he said.

It's Margan's 51^st vintage (he worked as a flying winemaker in Europe earlier in his career).

In ideal world, 2022 would be a great vintage, but it's way too early to make that call.

"What we are picking today is brilliant," Margan said. "I don't know what the weather is going to do for the next month. I hope it's going to be warm and dry. It would be an amazing vintage.

"But it's hard to say - so much humidity around, so much pressure from the monsoon trough and basically we've been under a tropic landmass since the start of November. It doesn't make life easy."

The first day of vintage is a week or two later than the norm for recent years, with fewer hot days slowing the ripening process.

Tulloch Wines and Andrew Thomas have both begun vintage, too.

"We haven't had much heat," Margan said. "They ripen a lot quicker when it's hotter. But the slower they ripen the more flavours develop ..."

While the COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc with Margan's Restaurant at the winery, going well between periods of quiet during lockdown, wine sales have not wavered.

For the first time since he built the winery more than 20 years ago, Margan's tanks are empty. He expects to begin bottling the new vintage white wines next month.