April is a month of reflection here at Bloodwood. The predawn smudge of pickers car lights searchlight through the vineyard rows and the cacophony of fourteen-hour three-phase days amongst the winery monsters of vintage give way to a silence which you can actually taste; especially if it is dry.

The three driest months here at Bloodwood are the autumnal months and this year the fine dust that every vehicle or animal movement kicks up has picked up the added damp charry condiment of distant bush fire burn-off smoke. Over the last 68 warm and calm days we have had 64 days without any rainfall at all and the current cumulative total for the balance is a meagre 35mm.

After a moist few years, it feels like the drought, in all its constrictive silence, has again ground its way back into the landscape.

On reflection, we have a petrichor longing here at Bloodwood this April.

The Mix and Match Miracle Offer

We often get asked why we only offer whole cases from our website. For an obscure winery scratching a living from a hillside of gravel north-west of Orange, we make an economically ludicrous number of wines which we package in an outrageously arcane number of bottle shapes and sizes. This does our heads in when it comes to the logistics of packaging and transport.

We will soon be able to offer curated selections of mixed dozens, but until then the tyranny of the case at this distance remains. If you would prefer to mix and match, feel free to ring us on 02,63625631 and we’ll see if we humans can figure a way through the four dimensional chess which is the packaging and transport of glass bottles across this bumpy vast brown land of ours.

In the meantime, please feel free to enjoy this far from mean Mix and Match Miracle offer of six 2023 Schubert Chardonnay and six 2019 Shiraz for the exceedingly attractive price of $450 delivered unto your doorstep. The saving on this magnificent offer represents 6 weeks of permanent tax cuts from Albo and the equivalent excise relief on two tanks of fuel from Dutto. In our humble opinion, given the current political climate, a far better offer than either. Or to quote your favourite ever bigly winemaker in the history of the Universe and beyond, all our wines are twice what you want to pay for them and half what they are actually worth.

Some Vintage Thoughts

All the wines from vintage 2025 are safely through primary ferment and the reds we take through malo-lactic conversion are grinding away slowly this year. Except for the Pinot Noir which is through and in barrel, it is a matter of keeping each red wine warm enough to finish malo and racking them to barrel with around 60ppm SO2 for maturation. With record warmth in autumn so far, we haven’t had to use any energy warming the wines to keep them around 20 Centigrade but this will be necessary as we move into May.

At this early stage, we think 2025 is the best overall vintage since the legendary 2019 with all wines exhibiting a bit of excitement at this early stage. Time will tell, but we believe it will be worth the wait.

Homely Pork Spare Ribs

This is Stephen’s and my at home special for cooler times. Pork belly that has been well cooked i.e. for 3 hours at 150 degrees C.

Serve with Bloodwood 2023 Schubert Chardonnay or Bloodwood 2019 Shiraz

Bloodwood Cellar Door Operations Manual

When you run a cellar door you have an obligation to make the experience enjoyable and informative for your visitors and yourself. There’s no joy in repeating the same script to each taster eight times a day and in the end it is self defeating..people know when you are bored and will react to your tiresome exposition of the late harvest 2002 barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc with about as much interest as you yourself can muster on the wine. No, a much better approach is to try to work out what makes your customers tic (sic) and meet them at their level; to discover who they are and what makes their cogs turn.

We recently had a visit from a couple who informed me that they had travelled from Wentworth Falls to their appointment with us. When I said, “well, that would have taken you two and a half hours” and they replied that it took two hours and twenty-one minutes, for cellar door tasting purposes, you can safely assume that they are German engineers.

Another example: If you welcome someone to the cellar door and the first exchange involves them saying “sorry” then, for those same cellar door purposes, you can again safely assume that they are English..and probably from Essex.

And one of my favourite illustrations is when I was giving a tasting to a group of four who barely offered any comments on the wines but did a lot of leaning back and crouching forward in their chairs. I was trying to guess their professions. Their brows were generally furrowed and any interaction they had amongst themselves was extraordinarily precise and reductionist. Comments like “that is a Chardonnay” and “is this your idea of a cool climate Shiraz” and “how do you feel about changing the seating arrangements” gave me the hint that they were probably in mental health. And when they challenged me to identify their occupation and I offered that they probably didn’t like Scientologists, well the deal was sealed.

For a change, I managed to get four psychiatrists subscribing to my drugs. So, there you have it; relax, ask the visitor questions and imagine how they fit into your peculiar cellar door.