TOUGH YEAR, BUT NO SOUR GRAPES

President of the Hilltops Vineyards Assocation, Peter Creyke, made the comment, saying growers had faced harsh weather, wild animals and more

"It's been quite a remarkable vintage year, for mainly the wrong reasons," he said. "This region has suffered frost, hail and prolonged periods of very hot weather.

"Also, because everything is dry and the grapes are ripening, we're very concerned about where the birds, particularly Starlings, might think their next meal is coming from."

Mr Creyke said the frost, which struck the Hilltops region in October and November, affected locals to different degrees, wrecking as little as five and as much as 35 per cent of growers' crops.

After the frost came the hail, which split fruit and threatened disease in late November.

While little disease came, Mr Creyke said the heat that did - last month was the tenth warmest January on record - pushed growers to use water as they had in last decade's drought years.

"This is a very hot, dry, unusually challenging year," he said. "This year the demand on irrigation scheduling and supplying water to the vines is much higher than last year and the two previous years."

And it's heat Mr Creyk said growers might need to get used to.

"If the climate is changing, which seems to be the case, there's going to be more of these hotter and drier years," he said. 

"That will lead to the evolution of newer practices and different varieties of grapes being grown to deal with the situation, if it starts being a more regular climate."

But while Young spent almost half of January above 35 degrees - twice the number of days usually spent above the temperature in January - wine-growing regions in Victoria and South Australia suffered even more extreme heat.

Asked if the drop in yields elsewhere might boost low prices for local growers, Brian Freeman of Freeman Vineyards was not optimistic.

"It's not going to be enough to make any significant difference," he said. "All of the wine-makers I've spoken to are saying that they've still got large surpluses."

But the heat might not be all bad.

Mr Freeman said the heat might cause some vines to produce smaller fruit, making wines more intense in flavour because of a greater density of grape skin.

"Smaller berries have more skin [relative to the size of the fruit] compared to larger berries," he said. "Of the grapes that I've tasted already, we already have very good acid levels and the flavour is quite intense."

Jason Brown, owner of Moppity Vineyards, agreed, noting an "inverse relationship" between grape quanity and quality.

"We had our first night of harvest last night," he said. "And it's terrific, ripe, fresh, pure, good, clean fruit."

"It's taken a lot of work, but the early signs from our first picks of the season are very, very good."