Summer Love and Bloodwood

Share our exceptional vintages with those who mean the most to you.

Don’t know about yours but our Christmas and New Year was low key because we were reminded of life’s fragility and the importance of absent friends.

Playing with our new Kelpie puppy Kip, however, was sheer joy.

We also spent some time trying to catch up on a few movies and television programmes. BEEF was one series we watched, which only confirmed to me that people are up to pussies bow in frustration. There was time to ruminate about our COVID adjustments. So many missed opportunities for us to get together with loved ones that I have a serious backlog of dinners in mind. Food and wine is my refuge when I am feeling anxious and there is a lot in this modern world to be uneasy about. My New Year’s Resolution is to cherish gatherings with loved ones but relax my standards and not be so much of a try-hard. (We are indeed fortunate that wine supply is not an issue.)

The heat is ripening fruit a month earlier than usual and therefore vintage looms. Cherries, apricots are finished and now peach jam lava has been splotching my arms. The weather still begs us to slow down and gather in the cool of the evening with others. If vintage stops me from whittling away at my backlog, this is what I’d plan. First world problem I know.

As is our habit, Bloodwood donates to charity with each newsletter. This newsletter’s offer will benefit Orange Food Bank.

A party for two or more

If I can’t manage to gather 6-8 people around the table, we will simply have Bubbles and Pinot Noir for two. Bloodwood Chirac sparkling is a serious party in a bottle and anyway, bubbles beat anti depressants any day. I’m not going to wait for birthdays or a calendar event like Valentine’s Day but channel my inner Julia Child and make some dinners extra special and pleasurable. I’ll be better organised with pantry items and shortcuts. I’ve shared mine but am still keen to learn. What are your must haves? Email me at rhonda.bloodwood@gmail.com

My decades of experience matching a variety of foods with Bloodwood Wines could help simplify your preparations. Enjoyment of wine is so temperature-dependent I find, so stock up on our chilled whites and lighter reds for drinking during the summer and autunm weather ahead.

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Summer Love

In the spirit of summer love we have two offers to help you enjoy those precious times with friends. The first offer is a two-bottle celebration for those intimate meals and the second is a more comprehensive collection for larger gatherings.

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Everybody Goes Bad Eventually

I’m not big on mentors being an autodidact from birth, however, if I had to nominate one person who provided an early and encouraging influence on my life in wine, that individual would be Brian Holmes.

Glenfinlass Wines near Wellington NSW was his passion and he taught me much about his holistic approach to growing grapes and making wine years before Rhonda and I established Bloodwood. Brian understood that good grapes make good wine and that good wine needs time. He also impressed upon me that the major skill a winemaker needed was to know precisely when to do absolutely nothing.

Recently we received an invitation to attend a surprise party for a very significant birthday for Brian in Wellington. Most of the friends in attendance we hadn’t seen for fourty years or more. What struck Rhonda and I was how they had aged. Though still recognisable, at first glance they seemed pale impressions of their former selves; a bit like old wines, their vibrant, youthful colour had faded, their necks had ullaged down to their shoulders and like me, they probably leaked a bit when laying down. But what a wonderful and varied collection of vintages they were.

Randy Newman, the most important philosopher alive today in Los Angeles, maintains that “everybody goes bad eventually”. This may well be true of philosophers, musicians and wine makers, but let me tell you, his case falls down when it comes to the Glenfinlass 1978 Cabernet Sauvignon.

We have had this picture of two young chaps trying a newly barrelled 78 on our website for many years. I remember that the two new puncheons we used for the 78 were sent over to Alf Kurtz in Mudgee to season them with 77 Mudgee Wines Cabernet before they returned to Brian for vintage 78. No point in complicating good Glenfinlass fruit with overly aggressive new oak even if the barrel size was, by today’s standards large at 550 litres.

Brian, the generous person that he is, inquired if I would like to try the 78 again with him. He had two bottles left with relatively sound corks. He opened one and we spent the next hour drinking it down to the dregs. I remember hand-bottling the wine on a five spout gravity fed filler directly out of the barrel. There was no filtration, no CO2 flushing to speak of and only a hand corking machine to insert the seal. And although its youthful, vibrant colour was fading a little and it had ullaged to the bottom of the neck it was simply a wonderful old red wine with deep fruit and enough soft tannin to support a generous palate. Like its maker, after 46 years, it was wonderful to catch up.

Take that Randy.

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Vintage Looms

We began picking Chardonnay on Saturday 3rd February this 2024 vintage. That’s a full 43 days earlier than 2023. So, in effect, we are into our second vintage in a week shy of 10 months.

Ridiculous.

It used tobe in the oldy worldy days that we began picking Chardonnay near the end of March and vintage ran over the subsequent six weeks or so. After the hottest year on record everything is bolting towards the finish line. The crops are modest throughout and the fruit is in very good physical condition. Usually at 0.2 Bar we have a good flow of juice while whole-bunch pressing our Chardonnay..today the juice is very reluctant to release from the bunches. I’m telling myself that the excellent condition of the fruit with no disease or breakdown means that the juice release will be at higher pressures around 0.6 Bar...but I have been telling myself some strange things lately. As with everything wine, only time will tell.

See, you can lead a wine maker to a cliché, but you can’t make him think.

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Say hi to “Kip”

After a sad year of no Bloodwood dog, we have re-entered the fray. This little chap is related to all three of our previous Karana kelpies over 40 years here at Bloodwood. His name is “Kip”, a reminiscence of my first bitch, “Kippie”.

As a toddler in the king brown and crocodile infested tobacco growing irrigation channels of Clare (FNQ not SA) I had the habit of wondering off investigating. Apparently, if Kippie was also missing at the time, my mother was not concerned. She was very protective of me and would defend my honour when circumstance all to frequently demanded. I’m not sure if this Kip will have to do this for me but he will come in handy if I again start wondering off. At this stage he thinks his name is “NO BITING” but that should change as, like me, he grows into his ears.

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