Like for many of us, 2020 has heralded highs and lows for the Puglisi family at Ballandean Estate Wines.
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A celebration of the Granite Belt's unique terrior, high altitude and cool climate, their wines tell the story of adverse growing conditions this year.
Leeanne Puglisi-Gangemi said even though the vineyards are looking "quite spectacular", it has been a challenging year because they're still in the grips of drought.
"We did experience in early spring, a frost which we thought was going to cause a lot more damage than it actually has," Ms Puglisi-Gangemi said.
"For some reason, the vines have come back bigger and better and most of them do have fruit on them; some of the vines have suffered badly from the drought and just didn't come back as well, but we're looking forward to quite a good crop.
"It's certainly not our peak, we're not picking what we're really needing to pick, but the vines are still recovering and it's going to be a couple years before we're back on track with volume."
Ms Puglisi-Gangemi said the good thing has been the quality, which has been "quite exceptional".
"We just don't have a lot of everything, so the drought has really taken a toll," she said.
In spite of this, and the effect of COVID-19 travel restrictions, Ms Puglisi-Gangemi said their cellar door had recorded the biggest sales they've ever seen.
"When we re-opened [after COVID-19 lockdown], we have never experienced such a surge in numbers," she said.
"We've had the biggest numbers ever through our cellar door, which was a shock; one, that people kept coming, and two, a shock because we had to be COVID-safe.
"So we had to change the way that we do our tastings completely, not even just a slight change, it was a completely new way of offering what we do."
But the change-up was so successful, they're going to continue doing it that way.
The surge in visitors post-lockdown has been a sweet relief, given the recent trade tensions with China.
"We lost our export to China... but we're quite confident we'll be able to make that up in cellar door sales," Ms Puglisi-Gangemi said.
"We normally slow down during summer, although at the moment we're still quite busy which is great. We're planning on another bumper year and we're looking forward to another very busy winter."
As for the best wine to ring in the New Year, Ms Puglisi-Gangemi said obviously a bottle of bubbles doesn't go astray.
"Something a bit special that we've got to say goodbye to 2020, we made a wine this year called the GFM which is a blend of three of our more rare white varieties - the Giallo, Fiano, and Malvasia.
"It's fresh, fruit driven and we only made that wine because we had absolutely no choice.
"We had small volumes and we just put it all together and our wine maker said we'd just see what happens and we've actually created something a little bit special.
"And for the red drinkers out there, you can't go wrong with a bottle of Saperavi because it's so rare and it's just so unique."
