Excitement as 2015 hits market

For enthusiasts, one of the fascinating things about wine is the inevitability yet unpredictability of a new vintage every year.

The viticultural season builds to a crescendo each year with harvest.

This could be as early as February in some of our warmer northerly wine regions and may only draw to a close in April (or in rare cases even May) in our cooler southerly zones.

Each year offers different growing conditions, sometimes subtly so, at other times markedly different, and this, along with the hard work put in in the vineyards over the preceding year, will influence the final wine in the bottle.

A key job for our larger wineries producing the brands we all recognise can be to try to minimise shifts in flavour year by year in the labels people know and trust.

Smaller wineries by comparison may actively embrace the differences created by each growing season, along with those created by experimentation and new techniques tried by the winemaker.

Some grape varieties make their way into the bottle relatively quickly, with the new sauvignon blancs, for example, beginning to trickle on to the shelves in July or August.

Other wines that usually don't see the inside of an oak barrel, such as riesling and pinot gris also start to hit the shelves fairly quickly, while the first new vintage roses will be released to capitalise on the warmer spring and summer weather.

Oak-aged whites such as chardonnay, and the majority of the reds will trickle on to the market a year and more later.

Depending on the vagaries of the growing season, there may be a degree of buzz or hype surrounding coming vintage releases.

Tasting them and making up your own mind is an annual ritual and part of the fun.