We are getting into the festive spirit here at Aldersyde!
Order a dozen 2008 Merlot before 1 January 2012 and receive $25 off the regular case price. This means that from now until the new year the 2008 Merlot is only $150 per case.
Merry Christmas everyone!
I am in the process of grafting over another row of chardonnay to malbec. While to many professional grafters this is a fast and painless task, for me it takes quite a bit of time. But I do love doing it. I love seeing a new life spring from old. This is now my 3rd season of grafting, so I think I am getting better and faster. For me the trick is to make sure the bud I cut from the cane (stored over winter in the fridge) is cut clean and straight so it can fit exactly into the chip in the old vine without any light exposed between the bud and the trunk. Normally if I take time to match the bud to the wood, the strike rate is over 98%. If, however, you quickly bandage the bud in because Sunday roast lamb is waiting on the verandah table along with friends and family and a few bottles of red, you only have yourself to blame..
Here is a pic taken while I was out in the vineyard grafting over the weekend. It is a sea of green in the vineyard at the moment!
Just back from vintage at Chateau Chambert in Cahors working with malbec and my head is still full of French words .. and my stomach full of French cheese! Ah, la belle France!! If only it didn't entail such a hellishly long flight!
For those who don't know, Cahors is about 2 hours east of Bordeaux and is a region where malbec is king. I wanted to learn more about this underrated grape variety, especially as each year our own small planting of malbec shines with personality and flavour. I wanted to learn what the variety looked and tasted like in Cahors and to steal some winemaking tricks. How can I aspire to make good malbec without paying homage to one of the best regions in the world for malbec?
Chateau Chambert is one of the most beautiful estates in the region, with its chateau overlooking the domain's vineyards. And the people in it are some of the most generous and kind people I've worked with, with a wicked sense of humour! I miss you all already - Vincent, Charles, Sylvie, Renne, Loulou, Amande, Bernard and Philippe je vous attends en Australie!!
We crushed malbec for about 10 days, 8am-10pm, then the fermentation regime began in earnest. Like most French producers I've worked with, Chambert believes in post ferment maceration. We looked for "gras" or fatness on the palate - when those sometimes astringent tannins plateau out and develop roundness on the palate.
Although still suffering jetlag, I couldn't help but go down into the cellar and compare our wines against the wines I've been tasting and working with in France for the past month. I was happy to see our chardonnay looking bright yet complex - I will start preparing it for bottling shortly. Our malbec looks entirely different to Cahors! Ours is lifted violets and raspberry/plum fruits with a focus on fruit on the palate whereas Cahors tends to have more savoury tannins and an entirely different acid profile. It will be interesting to see how my malbec 2012 will look in light of the techniques learnt from my vintage in Cahors.
Bottling is my least favourite part of the winemaking process. Any mistakes at this late stage are critical to the wine and have the potential to destroy all that work in the vineyard, during vintage, maturation and in preparing the wines for bottling. It is a time when I am very particular about how my wines must be treated. It is a time for analysis and control.
This year we decided to take more control over the bottling process by taking our wines down to state of the art winery, Mandoon, where we arranged for Maurice and Peter of MAP Bottling with their portable bottling and packaging line to bottle our wines. It was a delight to work with such professional people who cared about the product in such a beautiful facility. Uncle Ray, Aunty Lee, Mum, Tetka Beka, Ujak Milic, Pat and Roger made excellent bottling line staff. We were finished by 2pm rather than the expected 5pm!
Although I find it hard to look at my wines after bottling - after they are warped and pumped and crammed through filters - I think the 2010 reds as a whole show bright red berry fruit rather than the darker mulberry/plum spectrum of the 2008s.
As I write, the truck is bringing back our cartons of wine to our winery where they will recover for 18-24 months before we release them. It gives me great pleasure to walk through our storage rooms and see these wines resting only 10 metres from the vines from which they originated. There is a nice synergy in that, I think.
So vintage 2010 is finally laid to rest, ready for your appraisal in a few years time.
Who would have thought we would have no pink left to celebrate the first day of Spring?! Tis a sad but true fact. Our next rose will not be available until at least June next year. Our apologies to those customers who enjoy our rose especially over summer. We will try to make a little more next year to keep everyone happy.
Thank you to everyone who helped to make our birthday anniversary so successful last weekend. While the weather was not ideal on Saturday, we couldn't have hoped for a better day on Sunday. We had a great time catching up with everyone and meeting new people. To our new customers, we hope you realise you are now part of the Aldersyde clan!! And while we were sorry that our eastern states friends couldn't join us, thank you for your kind words and support.
Finally, congratulations to the piromaniacs in the Clan who managed to get a sodden bonfire up and away! Impressive feat.
Thank you for making it such a special day.
See you next year ... the first Sunday of July!
Although the ash cloud may have thwarted Lara from judging at the Boutique Wine Show in Sydney this week, nothing can stop us from celebrating our birthday on the first weekend of July!!!
We invite all our friends and customers (many who have become friends) up to our vineyard on 2-3 July to help us celebrate the year that has passed. To entice you, we will be offering a 10% discount on all dozens purchased. This is essentially a saving of 30% off the single bottle price.
We will be open from 10am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday with the full range of Aldersyde wines available to taste and purchase. Limited stock of the 2009 Chardonnay remains (~5 cases), so be early or email us at info@aldersyde.com.au to reserve your wine.
We hope you can join us!
226 Aldersyde Road
BICKLEY
I guess my first comment would be 'hard work'. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE vintage!!! It is the performance of the year. I get carried away in the excitement and rush of discovering whether what I've done in the vineyard has paid off. Normally it never feels like work. This year, however, for many batches it did. It was a combination of bad bird damage, very hot temperatures right throughout vintage and a series of unpredictable events, like a bushfire and power black out before our biggest harvest day!
For those who don't know, over here in the West, we are in a period of drought. Last year in Bickley we received only half our annual rainfall - a mere 573mm instead of our average of around 1000mm. We are still waiting for our autumn rains as I write, with many of the vines hanging onto their leaves due to our prolonged Indian summer. Much of our old orchard planted by my grandparents didn't make it through the summer, which I think broke Mum's heart. But we did manage to keep the water up to some of our oldest orange trees (it's on our label, after all!) and plum trees (though I'm yet to convince the Perth RAS jam judges of my plum jam making skills).
"The more wine I taste, the more I realise that what I want to drink is a wine with an honest story"
As a primary producer who is in direct contact with the land and seasons, it is worrying that STILL the production of alternate sources of energy is not a primary consideration for the government. Last year's weather patterns only increases my anxiety about the future of our planet. What heritage are we leaving our children? It is time to think of the bigger picture.
But I deviate ... in terms of our little winery, all our red wines are now through malolactic fermentation and getting ready for The Deep Winter Sleep. I think the feeling parents get when they put their kids down for the night is a little akin to how we winemakers feel when our wines are through malo. It means we can take a few deep breaths before the pruning season and bottling begins.
Looking at the wines post malo, I think we have achieved some good results from a difficult vintage. In fact, if I'm honest with myself, I am more pleased with the wines now than how I felt about them during vintage. In my opinion, 2011 is the year of Shiraz in the Perth Hills. It is the best Shiraz I've made since returning to the Hills in 2007. In fact, all the old vine batches (malbec, shiraz and cabernet) look fantastic. They have a voice. They have something to say about their season and vintage. As I said to a colleague at a tasting last week, the great thing about estate wineries or single site wines is that each vintage presents a bottled history of a vineyard's life. Some years are better than others, but each vintage is a story and an honest reflection of what the vineyard faced that year. Surely it is more interesting to be a part of that wine's history than to drink a wine which does nothing to engage you because the wine has been warped and blended and bended to fit winemaking specs or something that the winemaker wants to create rather than what the vineyard has already created. The more wine I taste, the more I realise that what I want to drink is a wine with an honest story.
Other news of note is that our May Harvest Festival was especially successful with many new and old customers dropping in to say hi and pick up their dozen or 2. It is always so humbling to hear your encouragement and good wishes. It is what keeps us going in what is still a very difficult time.
Our best wishes to you and your families.
Lara, Di and the Aldersyde team (including Oban and Zoe whose happy tails don't know the meaning of a 16 hr day..)
Well we suspected as much after such a long dry spring and summer ... vintage is early! Our chardonnay came off last weekend, the earliest in our 40 year history. Perhaps the politicians should spend less time working out ways to exploit our minerals up north and more time developing timely environmental policies!
We gently whole bunch pressed our chardonnay at Mandalay, a fabulous winery run by Ryan Sudano in the Swan Valley, then brought the juice back home where it is patiently waiting in barrels for the natural yeasts to kick off. The focus of our winemaking, especially with our chardonnay, is minimal interference .
The merlot and old vines shiraz are scheduled to be picked this weekend. To me vintage never really starts till the reds come in. So I am getting restless and excited! I love working with the old shiraz. This year the berries are the smallest I've seen in the past 5 years with chewy, biscuity tannins. I suspect this vintage will be high in colour and extract so we may reduce the proportion of whole bunches in the ferment. But there will always be some foot stomping and jigging in the old vines shiraz!
Also exciting is the co-fermentation I have planned with some of Uncle Ray's guilia patch shiraz and our row of viognier which we grafted a few years ago. Its maturity specs are matching the shiraz perfectly. Hopefully they will make a lovely couple in a fortnight's time.
Unfortunately the birds wreaked havoc on some of our old vines near the creek which weren't netted, but it looks like the old cabernet vines managed to pull through relatively unscathed. Mum's top patch cabernet is low cropping this year, but again, small concentrated berries. If the weather stays cool for the next few weeks and it gets some more hang-time, it should be another cracking vintage for the cabernet.
Our thoughts go out to those of our friends and neighbours who suffered from the recent Perth Hills bushfires. It was a pretty hairy time ... and looks like Perth Hills is on bushfire alert again this weekend.
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