By Amy Looker
This year’s vintage of De Bortoli Wines’ Noble One Botrytis Semillon will not be released due to the floods that devastated the Riverina region in March this year.
The world-renowned wine is dependent on Botrytis mould, known as the 'Noble Rot' to intensify sugar levels in the Semillon grapes, however, the extreme rains that caused widespread flooding in the region submerged the Noble One vineyards and wiped out the fruit for this year’s vintage.
The 2012 vintage will be only the second year that Noble One will not be made, with the 1989 vintage also wiped out due to damp vineyard conditions.
Senior executive winemaker, Julie Mortlock, said that "patience and the hands of Mother Nature are the key to producing exceptional Botrytis Semillon, but she had other ideas this vintage".
"By the time we were able to access the vineyards, the non-Botrytis moulds were such that they would have had a very negative impact on the quality of the wine, while the Botrytis had dehydrated the fruit to such an extent that there was just no juice remaining," Mortlock said.
De Bortoli Wines has produced 27 vintages of Noble One, and since its initial release in 1982 has been awarded more than 119 trophies and 381 gold medals both in Australia and overseas.
The current release Noble One vintage is the 2009.