Quotes
Can I have this in a syringe and shove it in my thigh?
Spike Milligan (born 1918, died 27 February 2002) on the Lindemans 1966 Hunter River Burgundy. Quote from Winestate Magazine

Ad ogni male
Il vino adetto
‘To every ill
Apply wine’
Reader John McLaren’s translation of an inscription he found on a Venetian wine jar.

A rough guide to amateur winemaking
The old wine drinking mate, we’ll call him Roger, (for that is his name) said “I’m going to make some wine.” I had visions of a few boxes of grapes and bubbling yeasty brews in plastic garbage bins, resulting in a few bottles of vin trés extraordinaire. But Roger thinks big.

For starters he went out and bought about tonne and a half of 2001 shiraz from the Strathbogie region (south-east of Benalla). Thought again and went and bought a similar amount of cabernet sauvignon. We talked about how best to ferment this little lot and I suggested he try the Hickinbotham Fermentabag. These bags hold about 1000 litres each (you expect to get between 600 to 750 litres of juice per tonne of grapes) and consist of one large plastic bag within another – the space between the inner and outer is used to circulate water for cooling the fermentation. Carbon dioxide is expelled via a plastic pipe at the top.

Roger then went on a shopping spree. His list included books on winemaking (he borrowed my winemaking texts – which I haven’t got back yet if he’s reading this), a corking machine, 2000 plus wine bottles and corks, assorted laboratory bits and pieces for testing on site, two Fermentabags (to hold the bags he built two pallets approximately a cubic metre in size), a couple of vats, a crusher, a pH meter, a must pump, a basket press, and seven second-hand barriques – French and American barrels each holding 225 litres (300 odd bottles) refurbished by shaving and toasting the inner wood.

Very briefly the process went like this. Roger crushed the grapes, tested for acidity with the pH meter and added enough tartaric acid to reduce the pH from 3.7 to 3.4. Sulphur dioxide then went into the must to kill feral yeasts before he pumped the juice and skins into the Fermentabags (using a 1000 litre vat as a measure). Cultured yeast was then added along with a yeast nutrient (diammonium phosphate). Losing concentration at one stage he “…added about five times too much diammonium phosphate to the shiraz. It erupted like Mt Vesuvius. I had to pump water through the bag’s envelope to cool the fermentation.”

The main fermentation commenced within 24 hours of the yeast addition and tapered off after seven days. Shortly afterwards he induced malolactic fermentation (MLF) using a dried bacterial culture. Samples of the wine were tested at a winemaking supplies shop to check when MLF had ceased. At this stage - the cabernet having spent two months in the bags and the shiraz one month - the bags were slit open and the contents bucketed to the basket press for light pressing.

Tannin- and colour-rich pressings were added back to the wine, which was then pumped into the barrels where it has since undergone a number of rackings, and adjustments for SO2 and acid. According to our budding winemaker one result of the reductive (closed) Fermentabag process was the production of noticeable sulphides. To remove some of this H2S he rigged up a little air pump to micro-oxygenate the must while it was still in the bags. Later he pumped over the wine to further blow off sulphides, and used copper sulphate to neutralise any residuals.

Chateau Roger shiraz and cabernet 2001 will stay in barrels until the 2002 vintage (later this month) when he will blend the lightish shiraz with the gutsier cabernet and bottle it.

Roger has already pre-sold this first wine as a cleanskin to a merchant who will retail it for around $7 the bottle. The financials? Costs to date – equipment grapes etc. but not including time and labour - approximately $12,000. Expected gross income for this trial wine, around $8,000.

Will he do it again this year? “A definite yes. Maybe four and a half tonnes this time.”

Tasted recently Queen Adelaide Cabernet Sauvignon 2001 KK½

Fruity almost confectionery nose. Fruit sweetness on the palate leads to a quite firm finish. Palatable everyday quaffer – cheap at $5.00 the bottle. Drink now style.

Majestic wines
So what did the bowers and scrapers and forelock tuggers share with the Australian head of state Queen Elizabeth II at lunch on 28 February? 2000 Wolf Blass Gold Label Riesling, 2000 Peter Lehmann Semillon, 1998 Charles Melton Nine Popes, 1998 Turkey Flat Shiraz, 1998 Saltram No 1 Shiraz.

© Martin Field