Day 30 30th March

Following the end of malo-lactic conversion, your new Pinot Noir needs to be sulphured to 60 ppm and transferred to barrel to begin the maturation process.

This S02 and clean-up racking off gross lees will protect the newly vulnerable Pinot Noir from oxidation and any wayward organisms which have found their way through ferment will be swiftly shown the floor of the barrel. After topping these barrels regularly in the interim, in mid-winter, we will rack the wine off barrel lees back into a stainless steel tank and give it an analytical probe. And as free S02 levels drop as they are doing their protective job, these levels will be adjusted up to a molecular S02 level which will continue to protect our new wine. When this is done, the wine will be racked back to the newly cleaned barrels for further maturation.

Each time we repeat this process before bottling aids clarification, stability and homogenisation of the flavours of the new wine and oak.

Because we don’t really do much out here at Bloodwood over vintage, Essential Energy thought it might be a good idea to deliver a 17meter Blackbutt transmission line post to the top of our Chardonnay vineyard for installation on, appropriately, 1st April.

Apparently the 66kv mainline which supplies Molong and Dubbo needs to be maintained and our post wasn’t up to scratch.

It was a pretty impressive delivery effort involving a small army of fluro-vested individuals, a heavy lift mobile crane and a prime mover trailer which could expand and contract according to the length of the pole and the tightness of vineyard corners.

They also drilled a 3 meter hole which gave me a great view of the structure and depth of our Chardonnay soil profile.

Lets just say that there is a very shallow A Horizon and a sandy loam interspersed with shaley gravels and limestone lenses as far as the digger dug.

Looks like ideal white wine growing country to me. Somebody should plant a Chardonnay vineyard there.

Because we don’t really do much here at Bloodwood, we thought that we could occupy ourselves by pressing the Merlot Noir to tank. This is a five hour process from loading to clean up.

When I say we, that means Mark on a day where we have cellar door visitors.

And there was a steady stream of very engaged tasters today.

Thank you all for your support and wine making advice. We couldn’t do it without your support.

And as a service to other wineries in the region, (according to Charlie Whish) if these two trustworthy people turn up at your cellar door, keep an eye on your museum wines.

And lastly, as a reminder, if you show up at Bloodwood wearing a beard during vintage, you are eligible to be in the running for a bunch of our fabulous Black Muscat grapes.

A point to note is that a beard shall consist of a real attempt by a man or woman at copious facial hair growth more or less untamed and the greyer the better.

Good on you Gus!

Cheers,

Stephen and Rhonda