With all of the fires, smoke, winds, dust, large, isolated rainfalls and continuing drought conditions, a number of wineries across NSW have seen an impact on their vineyards.
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Thankfully, this is not the case for growers in the Cowra and Canowindra region.
Windowrie Wines have announced their 2020 vintage is smoke free and their vines have been left relatively unaffected by the tough weather conditions.
Winemaker Antonio D'Onise said the vineyard had prepared for a dry summer by implementing strategies to combat dry weather.
"We entered the season fully aware that it was going to be dry and challenging as far as the conditions were concerned," he said.
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"Since November, even last winter, we had started work on renovating and doing a lot of irrigation maintenance... we implemented strategies to prune differently in winter, we used particular sun or infra-red light blocking applications to the vines.
"We thought we might have had a season where we had less canopy to protect the leaves so we used those other allowable applications to help manage that and I think it worked really well."
Mr D'Onise said the vineyard had actually used the conditions to their advantage.
"Yes the conditions have been difficult, but every great wine is always made in vineyards that are a little stressed at the right times," he said.
"Having dry conditions has definitely enabled us to execute that same level of stress in our Shiraz for example as what the great years have had."
Despite a number of vineyards across the state having to reduce or dump their harvest this year, Mr D'Onise says he expects some gems to come out of 2020.
"We are very confident to declare that we will be releasing wine from 2020 that is smoke-free," he said.
"We're not able to taste smoke, smell smoke, so we're really pleased about that.
"We've worked really hard to firstly understand how smoke taint or smoke compounds get into the grape, we've worked really hard to make sure we understood the chemical analysis of our grapes and then we've also taken all necessary measures to ensure we don't have any problems in the winery."
He said while some wineries will be impacted by smoke taint, for the vast majority it is business as usual.
"We're really pleased to be in that situation and even other regions, there's not a complete write-off and I think that's important to note," he said.
"Whilst a region like the Hunter Valley has come out and said, "we are smoke tainted", there's actually quite a number of wineries and vineyards that are still crushing with relatively unaffected fruit and they're still really pleased with the results that they have.
"I think it's very easy for someone to say "oh there's smoke taint, that means that everything is stuffed", it's actually not that simple, there are gems that will come out of this year.
"Wineries, they are a complex business, I know for us here at Windowrie, we've got a year's worth of supply in tank anyway, that's going to enable some of those other companies to continue to sell wine, it's just that their 2020 vintage might be a bit limited."
Mr D'Onise said recent dust storms have also had no impact on his grapes.
"Dust isn't a worry, obviously I'd prefer not to have it, every time I see a dust storm, I just think of all the poor farmers who are losing their valuable top soil, that's not an issue with us," Mr D'Onise said.
"A part of having organic vineyards is that you have quite healthy soils where there's quite a good soil structure and from that, you then don't have erosion, whether that be wind erosion or water erosion."
In terms of the recent large, isolated rainfall in the Cowra and Canowindra region, Mr D'Onise said the only impact is a delay to harvest.
"It can write off a harvest if you get lots of disease in a vineyard," he said.
"A localised storm for half an hour, there's lot of water run off, the canopy gets washed away, the next few days are then relatively dry and warm, so I think, yes we are getting storms but the actual disease pressure associated with those rain events is still pretty limited.
"Because there has been quite a large amount of water that has been falling, it can have an affect where it does dilute the amount of sugar in the grapes and with that, you obviously dilute the amount of flavour as well.
"When we do get a moderate rain event, all it really does is delay harvest by another four, five days whilst all that water transpires out of the plant and then we get back to having more concentrated flavours.
"That's what recently happened, we would have normally crushed last week but we held off and we are actually starting again tomorrow because of a little bit rain that we had."
While the quality of his wine has been unaffected, Mr D'Onise said local growers have taken a hit financially due to the drought.
"Whilst Windowrie Wines, the wine brand is unaffected, there are still some financial implications," he said.
"Just encouraging people to buy from the bush, shop local, support local industry, is really important.
"It's really important people don't buy into the hoopla of smoke taint and all that sort of stuff, still look to buy NSW wines and local wines."
