As you are aware my best Shiraz comes off the home blocks and in particular six rows that produce superior fruit to the rest of the block. This fruit goes to make the best Veritas wine called Hanisch. To show you how the grapes develop I have taken photos of the same grape clusters at approximately one week intervals. I started on the 23rd of December. Next year we will get moving earlier.
Thursday, 23rd December, 2004
Small green berries with a very loose structure. This is good as at this stage. You want the bunch looking, well ‘unbunch’ like. Tight bunches at this stage is undesirable and means the crop is too large.
Friday, 7th January, 2005
Starting to fill out but two weeks has gone by. A little weather effect showing on the leaves and the grapes.
Tuesday, 11th January, 2005
These look very good as the patches of hot weather that are hitting the valley are not causing any distress at this stage. Bunches are still fairly loose.
Thursday, 20th January, 2005
The colour change happens quickly and is called veraison. The green chlorophyll changes to the red of anthocyanins and the berry softens, starts to enlarge and sugars accumulate. You can also see the cane ripening.
Tuesday, 25th January, 2005
Developing a lovely colour and the berries are much fatter. At this stage there is just enough sugar to give the grape a reasonable eating balance.
After this the cold period arrived so let’s see what happened.
Wednesday, 2nd February, 2005
The cold snap from hell had us bring the winter blankets out of the cupboard. Out in the vineyard the grape bunches have hardly altered. It’s like they are frozen in time. No colour change and probably only a slight build up in sugars. This slow cool ripening is of course welcome.
Saturday, 19th February, 2005
The grape colours have gone to a deep purple red and the grapes are quite tasty with lots of sugar building. The leaves are turning as the summer heat takes its toll. And the evenings show a large drop in temperature which is excellent for grape quality.
Sunday, 6th March, 2005
The leaves are browning and the harvest is not far away. We had rain a few days ago but the grapes did not swell and show a touch of dimpling or shrivelling. The sugar level or baumé is about 13 degrees and we are looking for 14.5 to 15.0 degrees. Picking time looks to be about the end of March, depending of course on the flavour.
Saturday, 12th March, 2005
The grapes show visible shrivelling now. The baumé is at 14 degrees and the flavours are building beautifully. I now taste the grapes every day and in particular am looking for the explosion of white pepper spice characters. This was also the start of a run of very hot weather and over the weekend the baumé shot up two degrees. This took everyone by surprise.
Saturday, 19th March, 2005
Taken in the early morning as I was in a rush to check out the ferments. It is a worrying time in the winery as everything is happening and its happening fast. The grapes continue to shrivel but the flavour is still not what I want. Note the dimpling on the grapes. The full berry size was about three weeks ago.
Tuesday, 29th March, 2005
Now is the time to pick. The flavours are perfect and we took all the crop, 7.3 tonnes, off in one day. This equals 1.8 tonnes/acre or 4.5 tonnes/hectare. Which in turn is about 25 hectolitres/hectare.
Tuesday, 29th March, 2005
In go the grapes on the way to destemming and gentle pressing and let’s pray you like the result in the bottle. We will follow the ferment on to the barrel and finally bottling in the months and then years ahead. The vintage looks good but will hold my final comments until the wines have gone through malolactic fermentation as the vintage had some odd ups and downs.
