Premier wines

2023 was our first vintage. The winter was dry but not as severely so as elsewhere in the south. We saw bud burst at the end of March, which coincided with a shift towards more precipitation than winter. Flowering was exceptionally long as the weather again turned even wetter and cooler. Our two biggest storms of the growing season occurred during our flowering. This resulted in an average fruit set and a loss in projected yields. June and July saw the weather settle into historical averages with the occasional rain fall and very high humidity overnight. August arrived and we had not recorded more than a handful of days above 30 degrees celsius and none above 33. With the work to build the winery almost finished and a heatwave arriving we started harvesting August 18. We picked by hand in the mornings with a small crew of friends and family and had all the fruit in towards the end of the heat wave on August 26.

The fruit was cold stored in an industrial apple fridge because we were now well above 40 degrees celsius. We picked mornings, took that fruit to the fridge and pressed it at night. Our new to us but nearly twenty year old basket press worked nearly without fail. We foot tread and whole cluster pressed every single cluster of fruit we picked. This juice went through a long settling in the cave before being racked to barriques for fermentation without any additions other than 15ppm sulphur at the settling tank.

The wines all tracked remarkably similar throughout their ferments. Having the small press meant we were able to keep each of our seven parcels separate and they stayed that way since being initially put in barrel right up until a first racking at the end of August 2024 to be ready to bottle for the end of October.