Wine to bottle

Remember just last quarter we told you we’d bottled 5000 cases and were tripping at how far we’d come? Well buckle up, we’ve just bottled another 4600 cases. The bottling was a breeze, surprisingly drama free- unless you take into account that the labels arrived the morning of, (not stressful at all) and the rest was pretty cruisy. Stellar vintages these past two years had us making a lot more wine than we normally would- gotta make hay while the sun shines right!? This means for this upcoming vintage, we’ll stick to around 100 tonnes. The cellar is now stocked full with all the usual goodies, of which we will slowly start releasing over the next few months.

For now, the attention has turned to the vineyard and a winery overhaul. The vines are thriving, total rainfall for the region was down around 200mm on average which caused some early budburst along with some accelerated growth. We usually have to wait for the soil to dry up before the vines start pumping but not this year. Couple that with some nice warm weather it means we have completed flowering 2-4 weeks earlier than normal. The fruit loads are huge- some of the biggest we have seen in a while! All this could lead to an early vintage, I wouldn’t be surprised if we are picking the first week of January. Which doesn’t leave a huge amount of time to get our other project finished.

The winery is currently getting a facelift. The roof is being extended, cooling lines replaced and all the tanks moved around. Replacing some tanks and selling off a few we don’t use. We’ll have a new concrete slab by late December so we can process easier and have somewhere to do barrel work. It’s daunting and exciting, the aim is to improve workflow and productivity.

Currently we plan to crush around 100T of fruit, down from 160T last year, we have also secured some new varietals and plantings so get ready for some new small batch things in the future.