This vintage started with very high bunch numbers due to the excellent weather during the previous year’s flowering. Flowering for the 2005 vintage was perhaps the worst seen in Marlborough in the history of grape growing. This reduced the potentially huge crop to one of average size and lead to a very large proportion of small berries. The summer was relatively cool and flavours developed very well. Harvest was expected to start over Easter weekend but a brief and heavy rainfall meant that picking had to wait a further week until the berries dried out with the help of some strong, dry North West winds. Vintage actually commenced during the first week of April and happened very quickly as the berries started to lose weight and thankfully gain concentration. The end result was very low crops of incredible concentration and perfume.