Bathurst Region Vignerons Association member and local winemaker Mark Renzaglia said the region’s winemakers had harvested a small but solid crop.

“It’s been a really wild ride this year. We started out with quite a bit of frost (in October) and some of the vineyards were wiped out and grew no fruit,” he said.

“Others then went on to suffer through the dry spell and heat, then we had the fairly wet conditions over the past few weeks.”

Mr Renzaglia said while his crop at Renzaglia Wines at O’Connell had been wiped out by the frost, he had a crop at Mount Panorama that had made it through. 

He noted the end results had been varied, but said there was still some really good fruit coming off a few vineyards. 

He said the shiraz, which was picked in early March, and the white wines like the chardonnay, semillon and riesling, which were picked back in February, were good.

“Those grapes which came off before the most recent rain ended up with some really concentrated fruit,” he said.

He said the 2014 shiraz should be in line with the high quality of the 2013 vintage. 

Mr Renzaglia said he still had to pick his cabernet sauvignon vintage next week. 

“We had all the heat and warm weather, so the photosynthesis was going crazy and the fruit was ripening fast. We were looking to finish picking in mid-March, but then all the ripening slowed when the rain began,” he said.

“It hasn’t been ideal.

“In terms of the cabernet sauvignon, if it hadn’t rained it would be a better fruit. It will at least be a solid wine, but not exceptional.”

Mr Renzaglia said this year’s harvest fell well below last year’s bumper crop. 

“Even areas where they are producing, they were 30 to 40 per cent down on last year,” he said. “Add in the crops that were frosted out and there is less than half of last year’s crop.”

Winemaker Tony Hatch from Vale Creek Wine, who also had his crop wiped out by the late frosts in October, described it as a horror season.

Mr Hatch harvests around 28 tonnes of grapes in a good season, but he did not harvest any grapes this year. 

“Then the secondary buds formed but they were ripening all over the place. It just makes it pretty well unmanageable and economically it was not viable to continue,” he said.

Mr Hatch said he decided not to waste money on netting the poor crop and left it for the birds.