April 3, ‘05

 At this time of year, we are very focussed on the vineyard – the real action in the winery will start when the first fruit comes in – that will be in about two weeks time.

There has been some activity in the winery – at times very low level – with a walk through first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening just to make sure all the bungs are still in the barrels and keep an eye on things.

We have assessed all of the 2004 to see which, if any, should be declassified – and will go to the Williams Crossing label. This approach allows us to reinforce, and hopefully amplify, the quality of the Curly Flat wines. Some producers assess the barrels looking for the best 10% or so and releasing them as a ‘Reserve’ wine – while the Reserve wine sells at a much higher price, it does raise the question of what impact this practice has on the ‘general’ blend – is it detracted, depleted or dulled down by transferring the best barrels to a separate lot? Our approach is different – we assess the barrels looking for any that may detract and taking them out.

Some years there will be no Williams Crossing wines, as all barrels will be assessed to be up to the Curly Flat benchmark. While 2004 was a brilliant year, and yields were reasonable – plus the 2000 planting came into production – we have been even more rigorous in our assessment. We declassified 22% of the Chardonnay barrels and 23% of the Pinot Noir barrels – so later this year there will be some new Williams Crossing wines – very timely as we are just about to run out of Williams Crossing Chardonnay, and the Williams Crossing Pinot Noir stock is getting down.

We will be bottling the 2004 Curly Flat Chardonnay, 2004 Williams Crossing Chardonnay, 2004 Williams Crossing Pinot Noir and our first 2004 Williams Crossing ‘Quattro’ later this month. The ‘Quattro’ is a red blend of four varieties – Shiraz, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Pinot Noir. The first three of these come from our trial plantings that come into production in 2004 and were also used in the 2004 Curly Flat Rosé – the Rosé has been very well received and there is only 20 dozen or so left – if you haven’t tried it, get a couple of bottles with your next order; it is a great food wine with crisp acidity and good fruit, and unlike most Australian Rosé, it is bone dry with no sweetness.

There is quite a bit of work to do to get ready for bottling – the Chardonnays have to be cold stabilised (chilled down to near zero oC to remove the naturally occurring tartrate crystals – have you seen these form in a white wine when it is chilled down to very low temperatures) – and they will have to be protein fined to remove possibility of haze.

The 2004 Curly Flat Pinot Noir has finished malo-lactic fermentation and is resting in barrel – this wine may be the best Pinot we have produced. It was a great year, with a long ripening period – great flavours without excess alcohol. It is a ‘big’ wine – not from alcohol, more from pure Pinot fruit power. We may leave this wine in oak longer than our usual 18 months, because it has the power and palate weight that will be complemented by an extended time in barrel.

So now I had best get back in the winery and get things organised for vintage.

January 9, 2005

The winery is very quiet at this time of year – the only thing happening is malo lactic, or secondary ferment, in the barrels of all the 2004 Pinot Noir and some of the 2004 Chardonnay (following bench trials, we decided that only 40% of the Chardonnay should go through malo lactic). Malo lactic ferment is a natural process that converts malic acid (think of green apples) to lactic acid (think of milk/cream) – hence the wine is considerably softer and smoother after malo lactic ferment.

The naturally occurring bacteria that bring about malo lactic ferment are very temperature sensitive. In most wine regions of Australia, malo lactic ferment happens straight after primary ferment (grape sugar is converted to alcohol), soon after the grapes are harvested. But here in the Macedon Ranges (Australia’s coolest wine region) we don’t harvest until mid April, usually later, by which time the ambient temperatures are too low for malo lactic ferment to proceed, unless the barrel room is heated. So we are like most of the wine regions of Europe, where malo lactic does not kick in until spring or early summer. In the days before the microscope and the understanding of malo lactic bacteria (that is, until the late 1800s), the vignerons thought there was some symbiotic relationship between the vines in the vineyard and the wines in the barrel – for in spring when the vines woke up from the winter dormancy and burst into bud, the wines in the cellar would start to gently bubble as malo lactic kicked in. The one thing that is common to both processes is the rise in temperature.

Next week we will start testing each barrel to ensure malo lactic ferment is finished – if finished, we will rack the wine from the barrels. Racking is an ancient winery term – dating back to the 14^th Century – and it means to move the clear wine from a container, leaving behind the sediment (or lees). We use Nitrogen gas, rather than pumps, to move wine from barrel to barrel – this is much gentler on the wine and helps maintain the flavour and structure of the wine that we work so hard to achieve from the vineyard.

Once the 2004 Pinot Noir is racked to cleaned barrels, it will be left to develop further complexity in the barrels – we will check on progress to arrive at a bottling date, which will probably be around September.

Once the 2004 Chardonnay is racked to clean barrels, it will have two more months in barrel and will then be prepared for bottling which will occur in early April.

The only other winery activity at the moment is cleaning equipment and general preparation of the coming vintage, which will probably commence around mid April.

June 2004 Update

Harvest commenced on April 22nd and finished on May 18th - this is in contrast with last year's effort of one week concluding on April 4th.  This year was 3 weeks later than usual, whereas last year was 3 weeks earlier than usual.

Our extensive green pruning saw yields restricted to our target levels.  Early indications are that this vintage will produce wines with the characteristic intense and persistant palate that has become our hallmark. 

April 2004

Tanks have been cleaned, equipment checked and initial batches of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay are in refridgerated tanks.

March 2004

Here it is early March and the winery is very quiet, but that is about to change.

Next week we will begin preparing for the bottling of the 2003 Chardonnay which is scheduled for March 26^th – as usual, the bottling will be done by Portavin Estate Bottlers; their big mobile line with the latest bottling, corking and labelling equipment fits inside the winery.

Ahead of that bottling we will make sure the wine is ready to go into the bottle and live a long life. We decided not to make the change to screw caps, and will stay with cork for this bottling. We only have 320 dozen of the 2003 Chardonnay, hence doing it half under cork and half under screw cap was not an option.

The 2003 Pinot Noir barrels have all been racked off lees, using Nitrogen gas for gently handling, and returned to washed barrels. The individual barrels of each ferment are kept separate from the blended wines until the time of bottling (around August). These 14 individual barrels represent the different clones, different blocks and different winery processing (natural vs commercial yeasts, different % of whole bunches, different cold soak periods, etc). We will bottle off a dozen bottles of each barrel and it will go into our ‘library’ so we can watch the development over time and feed back that learning into what we do in future vintages. Some of you have done some tasting from the individual barrels – those who haven’t visited us as yet will find it an interesting experience.

After the bottling of the 2003 Chardonnay, it will soon be time for harvest and the winery will become the focus for two months or so. We have already begun preparing – ordering vintage supplies. Soon it will be time to start sampling the fruit from the various blocks in the vineyard – we progressively measure sugars, pH and the amount of acid as a guide to make the harvest decisions. While these technical parameters are important, it is still the sensory evaluation of the fruit that is the final determinant of when to harvest.

So it is back to cleaning the tanks and getting everything ready – we will keep you posted as we progress to Vintage 2004.

December 2003

We have been very busy since the July update.

A trip to the USA - Curly Flat, with our 2000 Pinot noir which is now released, was selected as one of the Featured Wineries at Oregon’s International Pinot Noir Celebration which brings together 60 Pinot winemakers and 700 attendees in a three day celebration of "an elusive and wonderful gift of nature - Pinot noir".

After IPNC, it was the Oregon Steamboat Technical Conference which is a forum for Pinot noir winemakers from around the globe. Winemakers submit current vintage barrel samples for assessment by 70 of their peers, over three days of ‘masked’ tastings. Our 2002 barrel sample received much attention with unanimous accolades for the intensity, structure, complexity and overall balance of the wine.

 The 2002 Chardonnay was bottled in July - it will sit for 14 months ahead of its release in September 2004. The 2002 Pinot was bottled November 10 and will sit quietly for 18 months ahead of its release in March 2005. Our wines are now bottled here at our winery using the mobile bottling line of Portavin Estate Bottlers, which encompasses state of the art equipment, generally only found in few large, modern wineries.

We are very happy with both these wines - not only are they the first wines made in our new winery - but both are the best of each variety we have produced to date - only problem is there is not enough of them as 2002 with its cool summer (summer?) resulted in very low vine vigour, reduced fruit set and crop levels well below our already low target levels.

Things will be relatively quiet in the winery until we start preparing for Vintage 2004. Mean while, there will be regular topping up of barrels, barrel stirring, monitoring of malo-lactic fermentation and keeping an eye on the progress of the young wines.

We have a new Winery Manager - Jillian Ryan. Jillian, who has a degree in Wine Science from Charles Sturt University and a Science degree with Honours from Melbourne University, has extensive experience in both viticulture and wine production. Jillian takes over from Peter Aiello who has answered the call of the ocean and taken a position on an deep-sea fishing trawler, with a view to gaining formal qualifications and progressing to having his own boat. While it is a big step away from his Chemistry background, it fits with one of his passions which is constructing his ocean-going timber yatch.

Until next update, when we will be preparing for the April bottling of the 2003 Chardonnay and the coming 2004 vintage.