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Published: January 30th 2008
Press Cake
"if you say one more word Rob you will wear this"Australia Day Recruitment Drive - 26th January 2008
(Video of new wine fermenting added - see below) Work on our 2008 vintage got started on the weekend, beginning with a recruitment drive on Australia Day! We invited all our neighbors and friends for a BBQ to celebrate Australia Day. Once they were fed and plied with alcohol we made the recruitment pitch for anyone who could:
a) Get themselves out of bed at about 5am on Monday to help harvest the grapes,
b) Get a good night sleep and join us later in the day when the grapes were ready to be de-stemmed, crushed and pressed.
Our recruitment drive was reasonably successful.
Harvest, monster spiders & chattering teeth - 28th January 2008
We set forth at about 5am from home and collected our buddy Paul along the way. Our vehicle was packed with picking tubs, work gloves, secataires, lots of water and soft drinks, plus some food.
The two-hour drive to the Upper Hunter Valley was uneventful. There were no other vehicles on the Putty Road (the most direct route for us) and about the only witnesses to our passing were some kangaroos grazing
on the edges of the road. Luckily none of the Roos were interested in crossing in front of our path, which can be a problem at dawn and dusk in this area.
At the vineyard we met the owner and quickly got ourselves organised to get to work. Harvest time in Australia is a lot different to what we have experienced in France. Here it is the middle of summer and the expected temperature was about 33 degrees, where as France the harvest is normally at the start of autumn and it is about 20 degrees. So, you can probably imagine that we were very keen to get an early start.
The next big difference between harvest in Australia and France is the size of the spiders that we encountered in the vineyard. Believe me they were huge big monsters and had not intentions of scampering away when you got close to them trying to pick the grapes. Another hazard of course is the possibility of snakes lurking in the grass. Thankfully we did not find any!
Lorenza, Paul and I knocked over our harvesting in a few hours. We filled the back of our vehicle with
the tubs of grapes and laughed at how the rear suspension sank once fully loaded.
The drive back home was made interesting by the fact that we kept the air conditioning on full blast, aimed at the grapes for the whole trip. The chattering of our teeth could be heard above the music on the radio. Lorenza resorted to pulling on every bit of clothing she could find on the trip because she was riding in the back close to the grapes. Once we arrived back home the containers of grapes were comfortably cool, but the driver and passengers were freezing.
De-stemming, crushing & pressing
The next shift arrived at our place just after lunch. Lorenza, Russel and Josh have had some experience in the past with us, then there were two newcomers - Brook and Greta. All did an amazing job de-stemming while I got the crush, the press and various other containers and equipment washed, scrubbed and sterilised ready for use. The de-stemming is not much fun and involves removing as much of the stem and stalk from all the bunches as possible. Doing this all by hand is currently our only option, luckily it
cowgirl Lorenza
Lorenza looking like she came from the Tamworth Country Festival does give the chance to talk and have a few drinks while its being done.
Next comes the crushing. Once the de-stemming team have processed a reasonable amount of grapes, they are run through the crush. This splits as many of the grapes open as possible before pressing. Oddly enough, grapes are actually tough little buggers and it can be very hard to press them if you do not crush them before hand. Again, we do this manually (one day our budget may extend to mechanising both the de-stemming and crushing).
Once crushed, the pressing begins in our ratchet basket press. This is a great machine and the design is so simple it has not changed in hundreds of years. The grapes are pressed within the wooden basket and the juice runs out the slats. Operator error is about the only thing that can possibly go wrong with the press.
During the pressing we try to strain out as many of the solids as possible (seeds, the odd bit of stem and grape skins). Then the juice (called “must”) is transferred to the initial storage containers to be cooled and allowed to settle for about 24 hours.
Destemming
Brook & Josh At the same time we add some ingredients to kill any wild yeast and guard against any bacteria. In a commercial set up the must would be stored in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks (or similar). In our rather primitive operation the must is stored in large plastic containers and cooled with bags of ice.
That was about it for the physical side of Vintage 2008, well except for the huge clean up job, scrubbing and hosing down all the equipment and the work area (takes almost as long as the pressing). The rest of the process now involves the scientific and alchemy side of the wine making process. We are not making any red wines this time around as we have a stockpile of Cabernet Sauvignon from our 2007 vintage.
For those interested the Baumé level of the grapes was 10.25 and the pH 3.1.
Stay tuned for further updates on our 2008 Semillon soon.
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