“It’s definitely a vintage everyone is very happy with,” Wine Tasmania chief executive Sheralee Davies said.

“We had quite a high level of cumulative heat over the first part of the year, and that meant the grapes were ripening quite quickly, and we started harvesting in the Tamar Valley earlier than usual.

“With that warmer weather continuing as the harvest commenced, it meant everything came in in a condensed period of time, so it was a fast and furious vintage this year in the Tamar, which means there are a few tired wine producers around the place.

“In terms of the most important things – quality, reports are very, very high, followed by overall volumes of wine - again - a very solid year this year.”

Often, high yields can lead to poorer quality in wine grapes, but this year’s quality is looking positive, Ms Davies said.

“In terms of quality comparisons, there’s probably a little bit of time to be seen because we’ve still got wine grapes being processed and fermented as we speak, but certainly there are a few that are comparing this vintage to 2016, which has proven to be one of the very good vintages on record in terms of quality.”

Ms Davies said this year was shaping up to be a record vintage for the Tamar Valley.

“Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to mother nature. In terms of, particularly, our volumes, that is actually very much influenced by the weather over spring.

“Spring is when we see the first buds appearing and flowers and you start to see bunches form and that is when our yields or our volumes are pretty much set at that time - back in about October. That’s one of the biggest impacts on overall fruitfulness or volumes of wine grapes and then we had the warmer weather, which certainly contributed to things ripening very well.”

The harvest began in mid-February and finished this month.

“Getting to this stage of the year is when all the hard work of the past 12 months is justified and we’re really, really pleased with the results from this year.”