Vintage 2022 (the story so far)

Every growing year represents some sort of a challenge. The aim of we wine makers is to rise to the occasion and corral nature’s largess into a bottle which you, dear devotee, are happy in which to invest your embarrassingly attained hoarded wealth.

The nature of this natural coercion and fruitful re-packaging varies according to each growing season. Too much rain or not enough moisture is as difficult to manage as persistent summer heatwaves or early autumn frosts. And as the climatic outliers are rapidly becoming more extreme, we agricultural types need to pivot our previously pernicious pivots with centripetal certainty in order to lasso said largess. (I think I now need to have a little lie down.) But before I do, let me announce with certainty that Vintage 2022 at Bloodwood is the vintage of the decade.

Yes, it’s been more Nina than Nino in the rainfall department however, because we are the most Continental of cool climates, our rainfall is a pale rain shadow of the East coast deluge. To date, we are 60% up on the droughty 2019 growing season with 686 mm since 1/10/2021. And yes the degree day accumulations have been low enough to challenge late-ripening varieties like Shiraz, but after the 100% wipe-out with smoke taint for vintage 2020 and a miserable drought-ravaged harvest in vintage 2021, vintage 2022 is, by a Riverina vine row, the vintage of the decade.

Pinot Noir

Pinot Noir is the holey grail of wine making. Its character is as stable as a political commitment wrapped in an Army Disposal Store mosquito net on the deck of a racing yacht during a cyclone. It is very hard to pin down and even when you do manage to grab it in both hands, the results are often times less than impressive and some way short of what was promised before your tack to perfection commenced. There are often way more holes than substance in what’s delivered and it always seems to be twice what you are prepared to pay and half its cost to deliver. The trick with Pinot is to maintain as much of its form as you can while rolling with the waves of disappointment which continually lap at the impossible masts of perfection.

It could be that this Earth, with its mutating climate, is not the right place to grow perfect Pinot Noir. However, we deluded folk at Bloodwood continue to shoot for the stars, or at least the light on the hill, when it comes to proper Pinot Noir and as Leonard Cohen taught us, it’s the cracks in perfection which let in the light. Unlike every other local cool climate Pinot Noir growing area we have the advantage of Continentality. Much like Burgundy, the cool diurnal daily and seasonal temperatures increase the influence of the all important skins in red wine making, while allowing our grapes to ripen slowly maintaining their natural acidity through to harvest. This is particularly important for the colour, aromatics and sugar/acid balance of good Pinot Noir.

As I have explained before in these pages, Australian Pinot Noir usually falls into three camps. There's the prissy anemic strawberry brigade with its onion skin hues and ever so delicate aromas masquerading as effete Antipodean moonshine in a bottle; then there's the much more complex, scrotal even, cherry beetroot plum crowd with its more velvety colours, more overall extract and weight on a textured forest floor toned sometimes earthy palate which delights in pH's as low as their prices are high; and then there's the dry red in a bottle with a Pinot Noir label on it.

Bloodwood, just to be Bloodwood, falls in between the first lot of lady-boys and the blokes with 'tude in the second category..sort of aromatic cherry scrotal…if you get our drift.

Very holey grail indeed!

Bloodwood Pork Barrel Offer

Being in a safe National Party electorate like Calare, we residents really like our pork, especially if it is flamboyantly delivered in a barrel. Fifteen million for a Bathurst multi-storey car park..no worries; 30 million for a bridge over the Macquarie River at Long Point (where’s that?) ..why not. A four lane tunnel under The Blue Mountains from Lithgow to Richmond for a measly 50 Billion..(take that sandstone curtain) ..now we’re really crackling. And the more you city types whinge about how much pork we get out here in the bush, the more we get to understand how hard our hard working local member is working hard in the porcine department. And with Orange growing so many apples, we just can’t get enough pork.

That’s where the Bloodwood Pork Barrel Offer comes in. Whether it’s your Asian sweet and sour, your pulled Pommy or your Yankee pork ribs you’ll need your discrete appropriation of Bloodwood to wash it all down.

• 3 bottles of Schubert 2019 $120

• 3 Bottles of Pinot Noir 2017 $126

• 3 bottles of Riesling 2019 $105

• 3 bottles of Shiraz 2017 $114

Normally $465 but now $420 for those of you in the know. (Nod nod..wink wink)

Rhonda’s recipes

The Bloodwood Pork Barrel offer goes well with many pork recipes

Chinese neighbours introduced us to sweet and sour pork. Pork was a treat meal.

Fast forward to now and Stephen and I eat a variety of pork recipes regularly.

Adverts advocating “Get pork on your fork” and leather-clad chefs as “Pork Stars” were amusing but we weren’t their target market.

Pickers of the bunch

As long-suffering readers of this tedious tome are aware, we set high standards in the vineyard when it comes to picking crews.

In reality, most of the winemaking at Bloodwood goes on in the vineyard through careful hand pruning, foliage manipulation and bunch selection at harvest. With a growing season like 2022 there has been immense pressure in keeping the vineyard free of the usual fungal and bunch rot diseases. And as we are yet to find a mechanical harvester which will avoid bird-pecked or mouldy fruit (let alone the bird nests; Australian grapevine caterpillars; Euclaypt leaves; bearded dragons; vine leaves; and all manner of MOG*), this is only achieved through a thoroughly trained, attired and vetted harvest team.

* Material Other Than Grapes

It was a close-run thing, however, even after omitting to mention he was the author of “Wine and the Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade” in his application, we are pleased to confirm Tim Unwin, Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) as the latest addition to our ranks because he assures us he specialises in bunch picking Cabernet Franc.

Tim Unwin is UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is also an Honorary Professor at Lanzhou Univeristy in China.

He was Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) from 2011-2015, and was Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission from 2009-2014, having been a Commissioner since 2004. He serves on the ITU's m-Powering Development Advisory Board, the UK Department for International Development’s Digital Advisory Panel, the UN University – Computing and Society International Advisory Board, and the World Economic Forum’s Internet for All initiative’s Steering Committee. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Globalization, Ageing, Innovation and Care Network at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He has written or edited 15 books and more than 200 academic papers and chapters, many of which focus on the use of technology in development practices. His edited book, Information and Communication Technologies for Development,was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, and his latest book entitled Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Newly appointed President of The Bloodwood Amalgamated Small Grape Bunch Pickers and Hog-suckers Association.

Bees are not men : Beards are Devo

In this Covid world, beards have many and varied functions. Whereas blokes use them to warm themselves up, lessen the impact of blows to the noggin during fisticuffs and disguise their sagging chin lines, bees beard to cool themselves down, lessen the impact of overcrowding within the hive and provide Instagram-able pictures for winery newsletters.

It’s a close shave but I think the Bees have it.