UPPER REACH winery workers are busy picking and crushing grapes as vintage 2025 gets underway.

Echo News visited Upper Reach winery to see the all-hands-on-deck action of crushing grapes in preparation før making some of the Swan Valley’s celebrated wines.

Upper Reach owner Laura Pearse was dressed in a rubber apron and gum boots as she washed off yellow crates previously filled with verdelho grapes, which were crushed in the morning.

“Making wine is 80 per cent washing crates,” she said, hosing off the juice inside and outside the yellow container.

“Vintage has just started and we’re probably back to, I guess, what I would call an average year.

“Although, we are down about 15 per cent in our yield and I think that’s been effected by the really dry period we had.

“We could see that because we perhaps didn’t get as many buds on our vines during winter.

“But also during flowering, which is in the spring, the growing season, there wasn’t as many flowers or inflorescences on the vines as we would normally get.”

Mrs Pearse said the first pick of the Verdelho at Upper Reach was on January 16, and the end of vintage depended on the weather.

“For example, we’ve got a really hot week coming up, so that moves everything forward a little bit quicker,” she said.

“I think all the white grapes will be picked by the end of January.

“Typically, we get maybe five days or a week off for a break and then we start picking the red.

“If we have rain, it makes it longer.

“If we have really hot days, it makes it shorter.

“The cooler the weather, the longer the vintage will be.

“We’ll probably be done by the end of February or the first week of March.”

Mrs Pearse walked through the vineyard and inspected the clusters of green pearls hanging in the morning sun.

She explained that although smaller than table grapes, wine grapes were grown for their flavour and sometimes a lower yield would produce more flavourful grapes.

“There’s a quantity quality trade-off for wine grapes, particularly,” she said.

“So, we’re not necessarily chasing yield at each vineyard, depending on their growing conditions, but also what sort of wine they’re hoping to make with those grapes as to what yield they’re chasing.

“So, there’s not really a one size fits all answer.”

When asked whether there were any challenges or war stories to share that encapsulated the vintage experience, Mrs Pearse laughed.

“I don’t want to jinx myself as we’re only about three picks in,” she said.

“There’s always a few disasters, don’t you worry but right now, it’s all going smoothly.

“That’s often the sign of a great winemaker.

“A good winemaker can make great wine with great grapes and the conditions have been perfect.

“But a really great winemaker is when things are not going perfectly, whether that’s climatic or internally or anything, they can still make great wine.

“It’s doing the very best you can all the time, but it’s especially important when you don’t have perfect conditions.”

Sandalford Wines vineyard manager Ben Maher said compared with last year’s vintage (which was the earliest on record in the Swan Valley) the 2025 harvest was looking more typical.

“Specifically, in winter of 2024 we reached seasonal rainfall expectations including good rainfall into spring which we did not see in 2023,” he said.

“Winter was warmer than average which contributed to a slightly earlier bud burst when the vines start to grow green shoots.

“We experienced a cool spring leading up to the start of the growing season, then a hot start to summer.

“The seasonal warmth pushed along the ripening and the vineyard here currently looks fantastic.”