2026 Vintage Report

For much of the 2025/2026 season Mother Nature seemed pretty cranky, but she finally relaxed at the pointy end of the season and the 2026 vintage in Orange will go down in the books as a very good one.

After a winter that was cold and wet, spring was peculiar thanks to a stratospheric heat bomb in Antarctica which resulted in non-stop westerly winds for six weeks.

Budburst was about a week later than usual, with Block 2 chardonnay and Block 3 popping out in early October. Generally speaking, everything happened a bit later than usual this season.

Mother Nature really dished it up with a late frost in the second week of November. Normally Colmar Estate is pretty immune to frost but this year we lost about 10 per cent of our crop right there and then.

She wasn’t done though. In early December there were some hailstorms around the region and some vineyards really copped it. Fortunately, Colmar Estate was spared and the soaking rain at that time was a godsend, carrying us through the 6-day heatwave that was to follow in January.

Finally, the weather started to behave itself! In our Block 3 pinot noir, the first signs of veraison (when the berries start to colour up) were evident late in January, again later than usual. The other varieties followed in turn, everything thriving as the weather stayed warm and ample rain fell.

Our harvest commenced on 12 March and all the white varieties were off by the 20th. Then four picks of pinot noir, the two latter batches being riper than the former two. Expect excellent pinot noir this year.

After a polar blast in late March, which actually gave us some snow flurries, the weather became fine, mild and very dry. And it stayed that way for the next five weeks – not a drop of rain.

This remarkable close to the season gave us optimal conditions to ripen our later ripening red varieties – malbec and syrah (shiraz). Our very first crop of malbec came off the vines on 8 April and looks fantastic in the winery, its colour a deep, vivid purple. We are so excited about this variety at Colmar Estate.

Then, after a long pause, we concluded our harvest on 22 April, the syrah coming in at a baumé of 13.3 – our ripest ever. Wow! We’ll make some fine red wines this year.

Around the region our fellow vignerons were similarly relaxed as their late-ripening varieties slowly edged towards perfection. The final weeks of the growing season were simply ideal.

In summary, early on it was a rough ride, but all’s well that ends well.