From my referrer logs I know I get quite a bit of traffic from folks who are interested in starting their own vineyards. If that describes you then this post is definitely for you.

I just received an email from the Trellis Alliance letting me know that Australia has just released the culmination of their research into organic viticulture.

From the email:

To assist grape growers who are interested in managing their vineyards organically, and to support further development of the organic viticulture industry, the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation and DPI jointly funded a project to document organic management practices for Australian grape growers.

The major output of that project is the publication Organic viticulture: an Australian manual. This manual will be of use to anyone interested in growing grapes organically, and to those who just wish to try selected aspects of the organic approach.

The manual may be downloaded free from this page as Adobe PDF files. It is also available in hard-copy and on CD-ROM (see Contacts below).

I’ve only just had a chance to skim it, but like most wine science coming out of Australia it looks top notch. If you’ve been considering going organic or are just starting out with a vineyard this manual promises to be a valuable resource.

You can download it here.