NOVEMBER 2006
In the vineyard
A new tractor with an enclosed cabin is on the way, making it easier to get up at dawn to do the spraying. An old timer down the road said that when he got his first cabin tractor a few years ago he got a hard time down at the pub from his mates – getting soft. It was only a matter of months later that he noticed them getting around in one too! Final consensus was they’d never go back to an open cabin. Mulching trials continue, with sourcing affordable material (transport costs) and sourcing suitable spreading equipment (200-300 cubic metres per ha) being the real challenges. The Riesling block is the focus at the moment. Two years ago we applied mushroom compost and straw to the shiraz block with fabulous results – much improved growth and soil biodiversity in what is a rocky, dry block. Add to this a reported 25-30% reduction in water usage and its got to be a worthwhile thing to do. We also are continuing to trial midrow crops to improve soil structure and provide some green manure. However, the continuing lack of solid rain means there is no point sowing our preferred crop – a specific ryegrass and fescue blend. We’ll try again in autumn.
06 Season and Vintage
After well above average rainfall in the months proceeding Christmas, the second half of the 06 season was hot and dry. While its good to have dry conditions as the berries mature, extended hot conditions are unwelcome (tends to “burn off” flavour). Autumn was typically long and warm leading to good flavour and colour development, with reds being picked about a week earlier than normal and the whites 2-3 weeks early, making everyone get a wriggle on. Yields were spot on our plan for premium quality fruit. Earlier in the year we had bunch pruned the Cabernet to ensure a yield that suited the vigour of the vines, keeping a good balance between leaf mass and bunch weight. This is particularly important for Cabernet, which can be difficult to get fully ripe in cooler areas. Overall assessment of 06 season – 7/10, excellent for reds, less than ideal for whites.
07 Season to Date
The 07 season also appears to be shaping up hot and dry, with Murrumbateman in the gripe of drought, just like most of the rest of NSW (and beyond). The dam is 2/3 empty, despite overflowing at xmas 06 and not being used since. Budburst was 2-3 weeks early across most varieties due to an early warm burst. This also increases frost risk, and guess what? Early in the morning on Sunday 29 October, a convection frost hit us badly, wiping our most of the early growth in the Riesling (one of our lowest blocks) and destroying 50% or more of the growth in most of the other varieties. There will be no oversupply this year, at least in this district! While the hot, dry conditions look like continuing, we’ve given up trying to predict the weather.
It’s lovely to see the rain again but, like many things, it’s
a double-edged sword. We haven’t had to irrigate until the last week
or so as summer approaches. But some of us have been spending a lot of time
on the tractor, spraying.
December 2005
Our preventive spray program starts in October. Every
10 to 14 days we spray the vines with copper and sulphur to protect existing
and especially new growth against downy and powdery mildew. Both are very hard
to eradicate once they take hold in a vineyard. Downy loves rain and powdery
loves moist warm conditions.
There are other diseases as well, like black spot and Botrytis
(great in Riesling, but not in Shiraz). Critical preventive sprays against
Botrytis are best done at flowering and before bunch closure. Otherwise,
the flower parts can become infected and when the berries swell there’s
a warm moist spot inside the bunch for Botrytis to grow and rot the berries.
The risk of disease reduces
as the weather warms up. The last spray is done in February, just before the
bird nets go on, as a precaution against late infections arising from autumn
rains.
But while there is routine, there’s
also change.
We have less than an half a hectare of Pinot Noir and it’s
doing so well that we’ve decided to grow some more. Rather than plant
rootlings, we’ve grafted some Cabernet Sauvignon vines over to Pinot. With
the root system already in place, the vines should be producing fruit next
year, rather than in the 3 to 5 years it would take if they were planted as
rootlings.
In September we chain-sawed two rows of Cabernet, leaving stumps about 40cm
high. In the first week in December we grafted Pinot buds (that we’d saved from pruning) onto the suckers that had grown from the stumps. Now we’re waiting for them to burst in 2 to 3 weeks time. Even with the rain we’ve had, we’ve irrigated to make sure there’s good contact between the bud wood and the cambian of the sucker. The grafted vines will grow throughout summer and autumn and, with good training, we hope they’ll
be producing fruit next year. Time will tell.
Other tasks in the vineyard at
this time of year include de-suckering and shoot thinning. It’s a vine and it wants to grow it own way – all over the place! We want it to concentrate its efforts in ripening fruit on a small number of shoots. So we try to channel the vine’s
effort by removing shoots at the base and up the trunk (de-suckering) and removing
short shoots along the arms (shoot thinning).
In another attempt to get the
ripe flavours in the fruit, we use foliage wires to lift the shoots up in a
vertical position, exposing the fruit to light and sun. This is a fine judgement
as sunburnt grapes don’t make good wine. Grapes that get the morning sun are allowed more exposure than those that get the hot afternoon sun. At times we even try to shade them.
In the winery
Winemaking
At this time of year (Spring) winemaking tasks slow down a bit. The hectic pace of vintage is over and the 06 whites and 05 reds have been bottled. The 06 reds are in oak and need regular monitoring. This includes topping the barrels as water evaporates through the barrels exposing the wine to an airspace that contains oxygen. This is OK in small amounts, but there is the risk of spoilage by acetic acid bacteria. They turn wine into vinegar and need oxygen to do. So keeping barrels topup reduces this risk greatly. As the wine matures we assess each barrel and they are all different. Some are fruiter than others some more oaky. It is a continual process of improvement as we use barrels made by different coopers and assess their impact on the wine. Tasting each barrel becomes even more important when it comes to bottling. It’s not a simple case of putting all the 06 Shiraz barrels into tank. Each barrel needs to be assessed for quality. Barrels are a natural product and they can go off. And we definitely don’t want them in our wine. At this critical time we also seek the advice of other winemakers, such as Andrew McEwin from Kyeema.
Planning for next vintage is on the way. We are reviewing our chilling system for white wine production and also getting more white wine tanks to increase flexibility improve efficiency and minimise wine handling at vintage. Filtering is another important area that is being refined. It reduces the risk of microbial spoilage in bottle. There are a few good microbes that make great wine, but there are lots more that can produce off aromas and hazes in wine. Although the use of sulphur dioxide goes some way to controlling them there are some that are resistant and another method of control, such as filtering is needed.
We will be bottling our 06 Sangiovese in November and hope to release it before Christmas.
Winery
Despite “completing” our new winery in 2005, work still continues. Out the back, we are adding a retaining wall with a new concrete slab on top of this to house the grape receiving bin. This will smooth the delivery of grapes into the crusher and reduce congestion in the winery workspace during vintage – another well earned improvement for the winemaker and her team of slaves. Safety is always high on our priority too, so we’re recently had a local tree surgeon in to thin trees on our western side where the major fire risk is. Recent high temperatures and the continuing drought have underlined the need to complete this work. These same hot, dry conditions have made keeping our grass green and healthy a real challenge, particularly with hungry kangaroos on the prowl. In the cellar door area a revamp is in progress – increasing our range of local produce to compliment our wines, while also creating a better display of our primary product – premium quality cool climate wines. Stay tuned for more details of the local products.
December 2005
Monitor, monitor, monitor. The whites have been bottled and the reds are in oak. But you can’t forget them. Wine (water, actually) slowly evaporates from the oak barrels, concentrating the flavours, but also exposing the wine to air, so the barrels have to be topped up regularly. We check sulphur dioxide levels to ensure they’re
high enough to stop microbes spoiling the wine and to protect against oxidation.
You taste them to see how they are going. One barrel might go into your flagship
wine, another may not.
In the 2005 Pinot Noir, for example, there are four barrels and they are
all different. The oak is the same, and so is the wine that went in; but not
the development. One tastes of liquorice, another of red berry, another is
sappy and the last one has an oak taste. Put them together and you have a wine
that exhibits all of the characters of Pinot Noir. I can’t wait to taste it in the bottle, but that’s
further down the track. So, to look after this fantastic wine, I keep the barrels
topped up and sulphur dioxide levels just high enough to stop oxidation and
provide microbial stability.
I’m starting to get nervous. If I blink, harvest will be upon us. It’s about now that we start preparing for vintage. Order oak, think about what yeasts we might use, what equipment needs maintenance, what tank space we need and estimate crop loads. The list goes on. I’d
better go and get started.
Merry Christmas.
Fiona
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