Day 19 9th March

The Bloodwood Big Men In Tights is living up to its celebrated reputation. It is well underway and as a consequence the winery smells of raspberries and roses. It is nudging 10 Be today and will start putting in the big fermentation strides by tomorrow.

This means I will have to keep the temperature under control this week to protect the delicious aromatics of the wine and watch out for any development of sulphide characters as ferment progresses.

I might also give the ferment a couple of “feeds” along the way to keep it on the straight and narrow. ( Was that you? No..must have been me, sorry)

After all, no one needs a Big Men In Tights which refuses to behave.

Is it time to call it a day when you catch on fire? I’m asking this for a friend.

You see, wine tanks have convex stainless steel lids which lock down quite securely to protect the wine inside. They are made in this shape, are installed on top of the tank in this shape and spend 99.9% of their life in this shape.

Unless you open them at, lets say mid-day and lean over them for as little as 20 seconds dipping the tank for wine volume.

That very shiny convex stainless steel lid then becomes an equally shiny but concave sun ray reflecting and concentrating mirror which is capable of setting your 100% cotton clothes on fire.

I’m no lawyer, but as this was a brand new shirt, surely there’s a warranty claim here.

Bird nets are a constant here at this time of the year.

After retrieving yesterday’s acrobatic individual, we spent quite a bit of time repositioning it over the vines. The view from under the nets is quite a peaceful one.

I know that the crows, currawongs and rosellas are being held at bay and it even feels a bit cooler under the white mesh.

But nature being nature, these nets also provide protection within their blouses for all manner of smaller birds. Luckily the silvereyes we have at Bloodwood don’t seem to have discovered grapes although there is a population of them living in the canopy protected from their normal predators.

Happily they seem to prefer scale, aphids, spiders and insects. I have no scientific proof, but my 14 carat brain’s observations tell me that never using insecticides on Bloodwood may be beneficial to us all.

Cheers,

Stephen and Rhonda