As you are aware, 06 was a cracker vintage and we were lucky enough to have access to some awesome old fruit for the first time. The fruit was from the oldest block that the Riebke bros take care of (around 130 years), and has regularly made Grange and E&E, purchased by Fosters on a per hectare basis. This means that regardless of the yield they get paid the same money from a certain area of land. This system is used regularly in super premium blocks to encourage the growers to limit the yields, as they are guaranteed of stable income. There are limits, however, on maximum yields - and when these are reached fruit gradings often drop like the Aussie dollar, usually regardless of quality.

And this was certainly the case in 06. It made no sense. The block was about 2 tonnes over weight with awesome fruit, but the boys risked being paid nothing for it by the big machine. Hence it came our way. We figured at worst it would probably make Albert quality so we committed some good prices to it. As we didn