A mild spring followed by a hot summer and a warm, lingering autumn added up to make a perfect season for dessert wines.  A portion of chardonnay, which was allowed to become fully botrytic late in the season, was carefully hand selected to make this wine.

Late in the season some botrytis began to develop in our chardonnay so we picked the clean fruit to make our dry, blue capsule wine and left the infected fruit to become fully noble and concentrated by raisining. Multiple passes were made by our pickers, each separated by five to six days, only the most perfectly shrivelled berries were taken each time.

Finale is only made in special years and 2000 was one of these. Spring was mild and encouraged early budburst and development of the new growth on the vines.

Finale is only made in special years and 1999 was one of these. The summer was predicted to be a La Niña weather pattern, but the cool weather did not eventuate. Instead, the growing season was extremely warm and resulted in the chardonnay ripening perfectly.

A warm spring got the vines away to a good start with early bud burst. The amount of crop which set in the early summer, however, was quite modest. The subsequent summer was not as hot as some, a factor that favoured flavour development in white wines.