00:00Hidden among the vines, Michael Keyes reveals bunches of Riesling grapes.
00:08It's the glimmer of hope the fifth generation vineyard needed after a devastating start
00:13to the season.
00:14I'm feeling a lot better, a lot more optimistic now than I was a few months ago.
00:20Back then, his Barossa Valley vineyard looked like this.
00:24Everything was burnt off.
00:25We had 100% burn off.
00:27We're here on top of a hill and we got burnt off with the frost on top of the hill and
00:31normally the frost follows like a water course.
00:37So it was the worst frost I'd ever seen.
00:40The multi-day frost event extended over the southeast of the country during September.
00:45A lot of extra care has gone into Mr Keyes' vineyard since then, though he may only still
00:51yield up to 40% of a normal crop.
00:55Time, money, diesel, everything.
01:00It's all extra, but we don't have a choice.
01:02We have to do it.
01:04In the Riverland, grower Eric Semler considers himself one of the lucky ones, even after
01:10losing about 90% of his berry vineyard.
01:14I know of growers who have been harder hit by the frost events this last spring and because
01:21we're a winery, we still have product to sell so our business can go on.
01:26Mr Semler says he's mostly concerned about the damage the frost will do to the local
01:31economy.
01:32It has a huge impact on regional business and I would suspect it will be two or three
01:37years before that starts to recover or turn around.
01:42The state government has denied financial aid to frost hit farmers, but it hopes satellite
01:47imagery will capture the extent of the damage and help growers prepare for future events.
01:53We have all sorts of challenges all the time.
01:56We keep bouncing back and the outlook for the wine industry is quite enthusiastic.
02:01A resilient industry hoping to come back better than ever.
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