Tom's Back Block
December 2011
Normally I would say at this time of the year that summer is well upon us. Well it certainly has not been the case this year and especially in the last month. So far for this month we are tracking about 5C behind our daily max and we have had to be extremely vigilant in the vineyard. I do not think that we have ever done as much thinning and canopy work than we are doing this year. I hope that we are going to see the benefits in the bottle in the coming years. The crop levels are not very high but we seem to have had a consistent set across all of the varieties. Some of the higher blocks in Orange would like to see a little bit of sun over the Xmas period but still are looking very balanced & showing potential.
The picture below shows our home block vineyard with a header harvesting the wheat crop just in front. It is amazing how huge the machines are and how much area they are able to cover in such a short time.
The picture above shows a new addition to our home vineyard. We have been busy continuing to not only improve the varieties in the ground but also find ones that are suitable to for our hard & rocky soils. This year we planted some Grenache which will be grown as bush vines and Mouverdre. We will still be 5 years away from seeing the first crop but we have plenty of time!! We think that both of these varieties will be well suited and look forward to being able to taste the wines in the cellar door in the future.
February 2011
After returning from France in December from the freezing cold you could say the summer here has been no different!!
Here is what we got up to in France..... Gives a nice view of the countryside and shows my athleticism!!
Compared to what we have experienced over the last 7 years this has been the weather that I was used to growing up, although there has been a touch more rain. This is the weather that I promised my wife when we married in 2003 and moved here. Georgie, being one who does not like hot weather has had a fairly rough 7 years during summer!! The vineyard has been a lot of hard work but I am sure that we are going to see the benefits from it in the coming weeks during harvest.
We have had to do multiple wire lifts this year as well as shoot thinning, fruit thinning numerous times and even a little bit of leaf plucking. Combine this with the usual amount of other things happening through the season and we have had our hands full.
Vine trimming that we did in early January
We are going to commence harvest in the next couple of days which is about 45 days later than last year and we are extremely happy with the quality of fruit. We have had to be vigilant about disease and spend a lot of time in the vineyard on the tractor but think we will be rewarded for it.
Our Orange vineyards are also behind and I would image that we may still be picking some fruit towards the end of April. We are working hard with our growers to make sure that we get only the highest quality of fruit from the vineyard.
Overall we have had a daily maximum difference of about 6C from this year to the last. Next time I write hopefully we will have most of the harvest off and in barrel and we can start the work on the next vintage.
