Vintage Time Archives

Vintage Time

Vintage 2019

Vineyard28 Arneis, Dolcetto, Moscato, Nebbiolo, Vintage Time

Vintage 2019 has finally come to an end. It has seemed a long season this year, commencing back in early February, a few weeks later than usual, with the last harvest being the Nebbiolo undertaken on the 6th April. In fact the Nebbiolo was only pressed off a little over a week ago. Recent tastings across the range by winemaker Mark are indicating we are going to have some awesome drops of wine this year. It could well be a year to remember. The first of our Pignoletto grapes were picked on Saturday 16th February, and the resultant juice will soon continue its journey onto becoming our first Sparkling style. But don’t all rush out to come try, it won’t be available until later in 2020. Good things take time to create.

During the winter months we had good rain filling our soil profiles and a cool but quite dry spring. This and the continued cooler summer temperatures through December and January delayed ripening, but resulted in our grape canopies maintaining excellent conditions through to harvest. Of note this year has been the bird pressure. It is the highest we’ve seen in many years with almost no blossom on the local Marri trees until virtually the end of the season.

The season commenced on the 12th February with our Muscat fruit here at the Vineyard 28 site. For the first few weeks it was a little hectic in the winery with the white varieties and our first Dolcetto fruit all coming in before the end of February. Then the cooler March temperatures slowed things a little and spread the harvests out with the Cabernet Sauvignon being harvested on 20th March, with then another few weeks before we finished with the Nebbiolo. Mark has had a very full winery, and at times it’s been an interesting juggle, but it’s all in safely with the 2019 white styles almost ready for bottling later in June.

Our regular crew of retired farming folk were back this year to help bring the fruit in, ably assisted by a few local students commencing gap years, supplemented along the way by a few international backpackers. It made for some great morning tea conversations after each pick.

Check out the gallery of images below from across the season.

Vintage 2019 begins
Sunrise at Vineyard 28
Winemaker – Mark
Pignoletto Harvest
Turkeys
Pignoletto
Harvesting Pignoletto
Morning Tea at Wildwater
Wildwater dawn
Wildwater Dolcetto
Cleaning bins
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet on Skins
Wildwater – under nets
Nebbiolo
Vintage breakfast
Winemaker in action – thanks to @Morevino for this photo.

Vintage – what is this exactly?

Vineyard28 Dolcetto, Vineyard 28, Vintage Time, Wine

What is this term Vintage ?

The Cambridge dictionary gives us the following definition of “vintage” when it’s used as an adjective;

– a thing of high quality and lasting value, or showing the best and most typical characteristics of a particular type of thing, especially from the past.

and when used to describe wine;

– the wine made in a particular year or a particular year in which wine has been made.

In the winemaking world the second definition is pretty close. The vintage is the year in which we harvest the grapes that go into a specific wine. An example is our 2015 Nebbiolo . We harvested theses grapes on the 27th March 2015. The first definition is also correct in that it also describes the best and most typical characteristics likely to be displayed in a wine. It personifies the weather conditions, the soil and winemaking processes that were used that year. All together they combine to become the vintage.

In our world we also use this term vintage to cover a season in our viticultural calendar. It is a time of year that winemakers across the globe refer to – we are in the middle of vintage right now. Meaning we are harvesting grapes and starting on the winemaking process. We tend to consider vintage to be over once the last grapes are harvested. The winemaking process still continues through until the wine is in bottle.

The 2018 Vintage for Vineyard 28 commenced on 7th February this year, with the harvest of our Arneis grapes, and since then the Muscat and Dolcetto have also been picked.

Most harvest days we start around 6am, and all our grapes are hand picked into fruit bins. These are collected and transported into the winery, where they are then destemmed and crushed, with the white grapes being pumped into the press or if it’s a red grape transferred into an open fermenter and left on skins commence fermentation. As all these processes get underway we start to build up a picture of what the resultant wine will be like.

Cabernet Sauvignon and Nebbiolo are still on the vine ripening away. It is a combination of taste, seed ripeness, sugar levels and acid levels that determine when we will pick the grape. At this time of year Mark can be seen wandering the vineyard early in the morning sampling off the vine, collecting samples of grapes, crushing them, tasting and testing.

We look forward to sharing the 2018 Vintage journey with you and bringing you some awesome wines in the future.