Day 7 - 25th February

Vines have been grown and good wine has been made in Ukraine for 2,800 years. For those of you trivia addicts, at the Grand Prix, Paris Expo in 1900, a Riesling by Prince Trubetskoi’s winery from Kherson actually won the Grand Prix. Crimea accounts for 50% of modern day Ukraine’s wine production which may be one more reason those brave locals are so legitimately mad at Putin’s Russia. I’ve only had to defend our Chardonnay for the last few weeks from never ending marauding bands of crows so on this day of all days I have renewed respect for what the brave people of Ukraine are suffering.

In the winery, it is now time to prepare our new very expensive French oak for the Schubert ferment. This is a tricky business. Having determined that the juice we have cooled, settled and racked since pressing last Saturday is beginning to ferment Firstly we steam the oak to 90C to sterilise it and check it for leaks. We use steam for its many advantages. Its humidifying effect helps swell any leakers, it sterilises each barrel without chemicals and we can run our steamer completely carbon free from our winery solar panel charged batteries.

Now while steaming barrels is a rather pleasant activity in the depths of an Orange winter, with the prevailing ambient this warm February they make temperature in around ten minutes of steam. After they have cooled down overnight, we fill each barrel to around 85% capacity with the just moving Schubert Chardonnay juice. This head space gives the ferment room to move and stops it leaving home without us and flowing down the hill back into the vineyard. I’ll report on progress tomorrow.

Many of you would know that we run our herd of Angus cattle through the vineyard over winter depending how the season is shaping up. If it is a dry winter where the cows can’t damage the soil with their weight then we let them in to graze. Now while a dry winter is good for vineyard traffic, it is usually a sign of drought and a feed supply trough. We seed the rows with oats or grazing wheat as soon as they are picked to give us the chance to grow a cover crop which adds to the carbon retention in the vineyard and helps our cattle get through the feed gap July and August usually presents in this area. The Schubert vineyard has been planted to grazing wheat and legumes which should do the trick if/when we get some rain here post vintage.

Cheers,

Stephen and Rhonda