Tom's back block - archive
June 2010 Edition
Well another vintage is over and yet again we saw the extremes of the weather. From early frosts, constant drought, dust and heat waves and then a wet and cool finish to the season. Amongst it all we have managed to have a great vintage where every decision that we made for picking turned out to be the right one. Some of the highlights for the vintage would be the fruit that we have sourced from our grower in Orange. Most of the vineyards are being run as Organic or In-conversion Organic and we were able to see the benefits in the fruit. Organic Viticulture generally leads to lower yields (mainly because of the weed management issues) but we see much more purity of fruit in the grapes, which enables us to make some intense varietal wines.
The Sauvignon Blanc was picked from Block 3 at the Springvale Vineyard in Orange. The altitude of this vineyard is 870m and the block is on a south facing slope. It does not suffer problems of sunburn and through intense management at the growing stage has extremely even ripening fruit. We picked it on 11th February which would be the earliest this has ever been picked. The flavours came in on the day that we picked which was lucky as 24 hours later we had 4 inches of rain. This would not have been beneficial at all for the fruit.
From the moment that we took the Savvy into the winery we have been impressed by it varietal characteristics. Through a couple of different treatments pre ferment of skin contact we were further able to aid the flavour development of this wine. It went through fermentation as planned and has continued to impress in blending sessions that we have had.
As we have run out of Sauvignon Blanc (last years sold out in 6 months) we have bottled this years on schedule (Will has been pushing me to get it out but we do not rush things in the winery process!!)
I think that you will be extremely impressed with the 2010 Sauvignon Blanc and we expect some big things from this wine in the show circuit over the next couple of months. You can never predict how it is going to go but we have our fingers crossed!
The other wine that we have bottled and have ready for release it our 2010 Rose. It is also sourced from the Springvale vineyard and is from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. If you like strawberries in your wines then this is going to be a perfect lunchtime wine. I was amazed how intense the strawberries was in the fruit and it is picked at about 12.5Baume which is about 1Baume before we pick the straight varietal wines. The trick for Rose is to pick it as a Rose and not some afterthought in the winery. Some people just take some free run juice of a ferment at an early stage while others may lower the colour (and flavour) by adding some decolourising agent such as carbon. Ours has a bright pink colour and from some of the early tastings that i have done with the family is going to be extremely popular.
The other varietals – Chardonnay, Verdelho, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Merlot (yes our first straight varietal of this) are coming along nicely and will report more on these as we get closer to bottling of these.
I hope you like these new release wines and look forward to catching up with you sometime during the year at our many dinner and tasting events that we do around NSW
Regards
Tom
