Latest Harvest News from our winemaker

The season has now officially started. As many of you know, last month saw the harvest of the Mount Cotton vineyard which turned out to be quite a fruitful day. Not surprising, the fruit quality was good, as was the volume and weather, all these factors contributing to 7 tonnes of our Chambourcin fruit being picked by extremely passionate harvesters! There’s more exciting news for our vineyards here at Mt Cotton. We are in the process of planting a new variety in Block 4 called Moscato Giallo to replace the virus-infected and leaf-reduced vines. This variety’s thick skins and high levels of sugar make it a good candidate for air-drying which concentrates the sugars, leading to a lusciously sweet style of wine. The new vineyard will be planted next spring and will hopefully start yielding fruit 18 months from then. Last week saw the crushing of 30 tonnes of Semillon from the Burnett Valley for the Perfect Day Semillon Sauvignon blend. At this stage it’s displaying delicious cold tea, citrus, green apple and refreshing tropical fruit characters which are fermenting nicely in tank. As I write this, the Ballandean vineyards are in full swing! We are in the middle of picking Chardonnay for our Signature Collection Chardonnay Pinot Noir 2016 blend. Great news. Acids are looking good, and showing tight flavours, which has a lot to do with the somewhat cooler weather we had back in September, October and November of last year. This weather helps retain acidity and refine flavour profiles contributing to the grape’s ultimate sprightliness. This season, we will harvest approximately 20 tonnes of Chardonnay from our Night Sky vineyard Blocks 3 and 4 and then move onto the Pinot Noir from Block 45 of Seven Scenes. These grapes will all form part of our sparkling bases for the 2016 Signature Collection Chardonnay Pinot Noir blend, sure to be a firm favourite! Fortunately, our vineyards have been miraculously missed by the hail and heavy rainfall typical of this region during summer and are in good condition at this stage. Our soon-to-be-ready Verdelho varietal is looking to produce fruit with delicious green apple and tight wounded fig notes. In the next few months we’re looking forward to crushing and pressing all the fruit from our 3 vineyards, and aim to process approximately 600 tonnes in total. This equates to around 30 semitrailer loads of fruit, each holding 20 tonnes for an ultimate array of amazing wines for you to enjoy! Adam Chapman CHIEF WINEMAKER