In combination with months of soaking rain it has meant many big old trees have succumbed – I have days on the chainsaw to show for it.

The wet weather has put many gaps in the pruning schedule for vineyards around the region.

The risk of disease means you can’t prune in the rain.

It has also restricted machinery movement. Taking a heavy machine onto waterlogged ground will have you bogged to the axles in no time at all.

Curious about how wet it has been I went to the archives to check if rainfall records have been broken this winter.

Certainly 219mm in June, 2016 is a record: it beats 179mm in June, 1998 by some distance.

So this June was the wettest since 1966 when the Orange Agriculture Institute started keeping records.

July, 2016, wet though it was with 148mm, is eclipsed by both 1998 (157mm) and 1984 (208mm).

The upshot of all this is that we have full dams and a saturated soil profile and a terrific spring in prospect.

As long as the pruning gets finished.

In 1996 the Orange Wine Region was granted status as a Geographic Indicator – the international equivalent of an appellation.

It took some fifteen years or so from when the first vineyards went in to have enough grape growers and winemakers (and wine) to be able to mount an argument that the Orange region was a distinct region.

Let’s celebrate at the 2016 Orange Wine Festival.