Tom's Back Block
September 2008 Edition
Budburst has begun! We are getting closer to the upcoming harvest in February - March next year. It’s a bit of a scary time as we are now at the mercy of the weather gods. At this stage I’m still thinking this could be the year that we challenge Grange - well you must aim for something! Then we are battling the elements - rain, frost, hail, drought and the odd plague as we work towards harvest. There is plenty of excitement over the next 5-6 months as we watch the vines grow and produce fruit, coaxing them into the best position for harvest and have the grapes on the front foot for winemaking.
On the weather front we are in the best position that we have been in for 6 years. We have a full sub soil moisture profile with the soil fully saturated due to the rain we’ve had over the last few months. It looks like we’ll have a good amount of water available for this season.
Pruning has been trouble free and the vines look great. We prune with a very small crew of 5 people. These guys do the same vines every year, which has enabled us to get good consistency.
It is not all work around here and we’ve been on a trip to the vineyards and wineries of Northern Victoria. The aim of the trip was to look at alternative varieties. The Australian Alternative Wine Varieties Show is on in November in Mildura http://www.aavws.com/index.php. They describe alternative varieties as those not ‘primarily made from the varieties Chardonnay, Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, the Cabernet family generally, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Shiraz, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Colombard, Grenache and Verdelho’.
With this definition directing us, we headed south and based ourselves at Beechworth for a couple of days. We indulged ourselves in the life of Beechworth – think old style lolly shops (for the kids of course!), the famous Beechworth Bakery and the pubs and restaurants. There was also the connection with Ned Kelly and the historic courthouse. It was a magnificent place and well worth a visit. www.beechworth.com.au
The vineyards we visited were:
Freeman Vineyards
Brown Brothers
Pizzini
We are really excited about the potential that some of these varieties may play in the future of Swinging Bridge.
June 08 Edition
Many people would say we have come to the easy part of the season. The wines are in the barrel and the vines are taking a winter break. You may imagine me pruning and drinking some of the new wines while enjoying the beautiful winter sunshine (no, we haven’t had any rain yet!). If only that were the case…
Winter pruning has started in earnest and to me it’s the most important time of the season. We are setting the crop levels for the coming years, giving certain blocks that little bit of extra attention.
The two main styles of winter pruning are spur and cane pruning (click here to find out more). We prefer to use spur pruning to get just the right number of bunches on the vines. Cane pruning is mainly done with varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc where bud fruitfulness can be a problem from limited sunshine exposure during the growing season.
The bunches for next year’s vintage will be determined during this coming October – November growing period. We are able to dissect the buds and see how many bunches there are. This helps to foresee any problems and the potential yield. We can then work out how many buds to leave per vine. This determines our pruning strategy, a mixture of one, two, three and sometimes four bud spurs.
We set the yield at a level to create a balanced vine. This balance gives an optimal leaf to grape bunch ratio to ripen evenly and allow full ripeness. Too few grape bunches and the vine can be too vigorous, with a potential for disease and an inability to control the berry size of the grapes. Too much yield (too many bunches) and the grapes struggle to ripen and are susceptible to sunburn under the small leaf canopy.
In winter we introduce our organic weeding system – sheep. The sheep clean the weeds under the vines and fertilise them with their poo! The sheep are removed just prior to budburst as they find the new green shoots very tasty. So if you buy some lamb and you think that the meat is showing some citrus/melon/nutmeg characters you will know they have been eating Chardonnay vines while dark berries/chocolate/leather characters and you’ll know they have been busy munching away in the Shiraz!! Maybe it is a new marketing venture for the Ward brothers. You will not even need wine with your roast!
Winemaking
We have finished the first blending of parcels for the Chardonnay 08. All the parcels have been sulphured (sulphur dioxide is used at the end of fermentation to effectively sterilise the wine) except one, which is just finishing. The wine is showing great potential with more citrus with melon characters rather than melon to peach. We are already seeing great integration of the oak in the wines.
With the Chardonnay we have experimented with a number of factors. We have tried using fruit from different blocks from vines of different ages and using varying trellis set ups. During the winemaking we have varied the oak treatment and lees stirring (stirring the dead yeasts back into the wine at varying intervals). We look forward to seeing how this affects our final product.
All our other parcels are looking great with the reds coming to end of their malolactic fermentation (secondary ferment). We are seeing great depth in the colour of the wines as well as some intense varietal characters. We have had a play with different treatments of the wine to add some complexity to the wine but keeping it in the style of Swinging Bridge.
Note – I am always looking for topics that people would like discussed in Tom’s Back Block. Please let me know if you have something that you would like know more about.
March 08 Edition:
This edition find out why Tom rates this as one of the best seasons that he has ever seen. With harvest almost finished he gives us an update on the early stages of the 2008 vintage and plans for new varieties for Swinging Bridge Estate:
We are now coming to end of harvest and I would rate it as one of the best that I have ever seen. We still have some Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon to harvest and should be finished in the next two weeks.
Why has it been a good harvest?
Warm weather earlier in the season around flowering time (formation of berries) allowed for an even set and no berry development problems. One of the issues was the dry start to the season but we had sufficient water to supplement the vines with which enabled us to grow a balanced canopy to ripen the fruit.
In the middle of November the weather turned mild and we have seen very little warm to hot weather since.This has also been dispersed with regular rain although we have been lucky to avoid any of the extreme weather that has been hitting Sydney and the Hunter Valley. January started off a little warm but turned mild and has stayed that way until now.
This month has been 3–4 C below average on daytime temperatures while the nights have been extremely cool. This has been great for harvest although it has been a little chilly to be harvesting!
Proof is in the pudding
The 2008 Chardonnay has now finished primary fermentation (sugar to alcohol) and is in oak. It has been inoculated for the secondary malolatic fermentation. The wine is already showing the signs of the cooler season with some citrus, melon and pineapple characters. It is showing great length of flavour already and a really fine palate. It is the most promising that I have seen a Chardonnay at this stage.
The Shiraz is also very impressive at this early stage. Although we only harvested it on the 1st March and it is cold soaking on skins in the tank it is showing some great primary fruit characters as well as some fine tannins in the skins. The colour in the juice at this stage is amazing and I am excited to see where this wine will end up. We are doing a couple of ferments from different blocks which is going to enable us to do some interesting things. We will be looking at extended skin contact, different plunging of the cap and different oak barrels and sizes.
Other news
This year we are also looking at making some Verdelho and Cabernet Sauvignon. The straight Cabernet Sauvignon will be a first for us but the quality of the fruit on the vine has indicated that it will be worthwhile.
December 2007 Edition:
From recent rain and grapes ripening to presidential nominations and the soon to be bottled 2007 vintage, Tom Ward updates us on all the happenings at Swinging Bridge Estate:
Vineyards
Things are progressing nicely in the vineyard with some rain finally arriving over the last week which has been welcomed by all. We have had more rain this month (69mm) then we had for all of the months of July, August, September and October (62 mm altogether). It is the first time we have exceeded our average monthly rainfall since February 2007 and most of that rain came in one day. Before that we would have to go back to November 2005! The outlook for the weather is promising with a 75% chance of receiving average to above average rainfall until autumn. As long as it does not come during harvest! If you would like to keep an eye on what the weather is doing here and the forecasts have a look at the following sites:
General Forecast - http://www.australianweathernews.com
7 – 14 day forecast - http://wxmaps.org
Weather Records and Forecast - http://www.eldersweather.com.au
We have been lucky in that we have adequate supplies of supplementary irrigation for the season and that has enabled us to develop canopies that are going to enable evening ripening of the fruit. The irrigation water is sourced from the Belubula River which is fed by the Carcoar Dam. You can view the dam figures as well as the flow of the river on the waterinfo website. It also enable you to access the figures for the dams around the state so you are able to see how dire the situation is especially for the dams that feed the Murray.
Waterinfo - http://waterinfo.nsw.gov.au
At present we are about two weeks advanced of our normal phenological stages (ripening phases of the grapes). Colour change of the fruit (verasion) should start to occur in two to three weeks with the Chardonnay going first. Our crop levels are at about average with the bunches are nice and open and suitable berry size.
Harvest will be in February (weather dependent) and hopefully we can avoid any disasters before then and make Vintage 2008 as successful as previous vintages.
On a regional level I have just been made the president of the Cowra Wine Region. We have many exciting things happening over the next couple of years. The main one is the Cowra Sustainable Partnerships which is the development of our environmental policy for the vineyards. We have already had great interest in this with a recent visit from Max Allen (The Weekend Australian and the Gourmet Wine Traveller) who had extremely positive feedback for us. You will hear more of the initiatives that have been set out in this in the coming months and hopefully some of the benefits that will flow over into the vineyard and into the wine.
Tom Ward with Max Allen (The Weekend Australian
and Gourmet Wine Traveller)
Winemaking
The 2007 wines are coming along nicely with the Shiraz my personal pick at the moment. The fruit we picked for this wine showed some of the most intense colour we have seen while also exhibiting some intense varietal characters. This Shiraz shows some pepper and earthy notes with a full spice and blackberry palate.
The Chardonnay is being prepared for bottling in early January and we have completed the final blending on it. The wine follows in the same mould as previous years showing some beautiful integrated and stylish oak which is well balanced by the fruit. The Chardonnay is showing some lemon and nutmeg on the nose while it has a fresh citrus flavoured palate with a tight finish.
We also have some other wines in the development phase so expect to hear more about these in the not to distant future.
