Day 6 - 24th February

So today was a catch up in the winery with a bit of juice racking in preparation for fermentation, attending to a duck weed enslimed foot valve in the main dam and a festival of sampling. On a day like this you’ll have your steps in by smoko. You can give me a hand if you like.

What I’d like you to do is gather a sample of grapes from our Riesling vineyard. I want you to ignore the end rows and vines and begin by assessing the vigour and fruit load of say, vine three in row 4. Then, according to your judgement, I want you to sample 4 to 10 berries making that selection as follows: one berry from the crown of the bunch, one from the back, front and bottom of the cluster.

Picking the picking date for each wine style is about the most important decision you’ll make as a vigneron. That determination is reached as all the viticulture balls you’ve been holding in the air (pruning level; disease control ; irrigation schedule; seasonal weather; picking team availability etc. etc.) fall into place and you make the call. Based upon previous vintage records, you can approximate the possible date by extrapolating the information you have already recorded this vintage cycle and comparing it to similar years. By now you will have sampled the fruit half a dozen times analysing it for pH; T/A and sugar levels. You’ll also have been playing very close attention to the past and approaching weather. If it’s been a dry and warm season like this one, you’ll have seen that the ripening progress of each variety reminds you of vintage 2019 and possibly that awful heatwave hinting at 1993. It’s then that you push the go button and hope it has all been worth it.

You’ll need to select fruit from within the canopy and on the edge facing you. If it is a vigourous vine you may need 12 berries. Now I want you to move 10 vines along the row and repeat the process. When you get to the end of that row, I want you to move down 25% of the vineyard and sample back along that row. You’ll notice you are now sampling the opposite side of the vines in the block. Rinse and repeat so that you return with a berry sample of 400 to 500 carefully selected berries. Oh, I forgot to mention that you may have to repeat the process five or six times before the actual harvest day.

For your records, your Riesling results today were as follows 18.6Brix pH 2.98 and 8.7 g/l T/A

It’s a good result but I expect you to do better next time.

Thank you for your attention to this matter

Cheers,

Stephen and Rhonda