La Niña wreaked havoc only selectively and Australia's 2022 vintage sounds rather like Europe's 2021. But with Australian wine's all-important exports shrinking, a small harvest may not be too disastrous.
In November last year, when Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology announced that a La Niña climate pattern had firmly established itself in the tropical Pacific, winegrowers steeled themselves for a cool, wet growing season.
During La Niña, a cycle which comes around every seven years or so, sea surface temperatures cool in the central and eastern tropics and the likelihood of lower temperatures and higher rainfall and flooding increases across...