Winemakers Toys

Well, guess what turned up today… a brand spanking new wine press. It’s just like Christmas all over again. Toys for the winemaker, big, shiny new toys with lots of buttons to push and moving parts and instructions to read – batteries not included.

Out of the container rolled the Europress P80, all the way from Germany. The bloke from Germany will visit us in a couple of weeks to help put it all together. Until then we will just have to casually admire it as we walk past.

I am hoping for big things from this new press. We now have a dedicated red wine press (the old press) and a dedicated white grape press (the Europress). The Europress will allow us to press whole bunches of grapes which will deliver juice with less colour and tannins and finer textures. Alternatively, we can crush grapes into the press and store them there for a couple of hours before pressing to enhance fruit aromas and complexity while producing completely different textures to whole bunch pressing. It will increase the flexibility of winemaking practices we utilise and hopefully increase the quality and appeal of the wines we make. Additionally, it will increase our daily pressing capacity and efficiency. It is sounding like a win-win situation. And that is exactly why the press has been purchased. It’s a significant layout of capital but one we think will have a significant effect on our winemaking and wines. It is one of the things I love about working for a family-owned producer like Printhie – they can see the value it in and they are prepared to invest in the future.

Vintage just got a whole lot more exciting.

Check out our Facebook page for photos of the Europress arriving at the winery

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The shape of 2012

As Christmas and New Year celebrations fade into the memory, the vines start thinking seriously about ripening their grapes. During January the vines go through a stage called veraison. During veraison the grapes themselves start changing in colour and texture. White grapes become softer and more translucent, red grapes become dark coloured and soft as they accumulate sugar and degrade acid. Crucially, as the grapes soften and gain ripeness that become more susceptible to adverse weather, splitting with excessive rain or being ruined by mildews and fungi.

There is no denying that the 2011 vintage was a challenging one. The end of the decade long drought resulted in a cool, wet, late ripening season with patches of disease.  Making good wine was possible but it was pretty hard work. Having just classified all our wines, we believe we have been successful in maintaining the Printhie standard – we will even release some reserve wines. Our motto at the start of the season, knowing it was going to be challenging was “in every dog year good wine is made and we want to be the one making good wine”. I think we have succeeded.

To be honest, the 2012 vintage is starting to look much the same as 2011. It’s been a wet, cool spring. Summer is struggling to make its presence felt, although the festive season weather has been promising. Long range weather forecasts are not endless days of summer with constant warmth and sunshine. However, we learnt a lot in 2011 about growing high quality grapes in cool, wet seasons. We are so much better set up in the vineyard to handle to seasonal conditions. There is new machinery, more hours being spent in the vineyard and changes to vine canopy management. As a result, we are confident that even if 2012 is to be the same as 2011, we will produce even better grapes and produce even better wine.

So with a couple of months to go before the harvest starts, we still have a bit of work to do but these are the challenges that mother nature brings us each and every year. Come along for the ride, it should be fun.

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The Gong Ride

Anyone that follows our @PrinthieWines twitter feed will be well aware of our participation in the recent MS Gong Ride. There were five of us that rode under the banner of the Wine Peloton. It included myself, Ed Swift (one of the owners of Printhie), David Hoskins from Brangayne Wine in Orange (@BrangayneWines), Tim White (@timjwhite, wine science student, occasional cellar hand in Orange wineries, PhD in Chemistry for goodness sake and IT expert!) and Simon Wright, who currently has no involvement in the wine industry other than he drinks the stuff and we ride together regularly.

The Gong Ride is organised by MS Australia who support Multiple Sclerosis sufferers across Australia. MS is quite a debilitating disease. I personally don’t know anyone who has it but the opportunity for a spectacular bike ride and to raise money seemed too good to knock back.

If you can imagine a cycling peloton of 10,000 people charging down the highways and roads from Sydney to Wollongong, it’s quite a sight. There are all types of cyclists from those that look very professional (even if they are not) to those that look like they pulled an old ‘pushie’ out from the back of the garage that hasn’t seen the light of day for 20 years. It takes some less than 3 hours to ride the 90kms, other take more than 6 hours (that would be that guy on the 20 year old rusty pushie).

It is an amazing ride. Once you get out of the Sydney suburbs you plunge down into the forests of the Royal National Park. It’s like a little bit of rainforest – dark, cool, damp and towering trees. You climb out of the valley and at the top of the climb there is a panoramic view of the sparkling blue ocean. The ride along the cliff drive is fantastic, especially when a whale pops its head up to have a look…apparently. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to crash but Simon saw it. Damn I still haven’t seen a whale! Then it was a fast ride with a tailwind along the beachfront to the ‘Gong.

The Wine Peloton raised $2,500 which seems paltry given the top team raised something like $125,000. But we are proud of our effort and that we exceeded our target by $500. We hope it makes life a bit easier for someone who is suffering from MS.

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