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April Showers

30/04/2013

Well, vintage – or harvest – is finally over for 2013. The guys picked the Petit Verdot up on the hill on a balmy April day, and that was that. I think if you asked the key protagonists in the cellar to come up with words which they associate with vintage 2013, once you climbed over the expletives, you might get: hard and fast, and just a little bit hot. I believe that the saying of vintage came from Joch ‘there’s been a slight change of plan’ ….but that’s vintage for you.

We did have a fair bit of help, mind you, over and above our stalwart winery operators. We’d already had Florent over from our NSW distributors, World Wine Estates. He put in some solid hours on a couple of reasonably hot days. James Brandwood then showed up, also from NSW, ostensibly for dinner. He was of course dragged in to do some pump overs in the evening. What did he think he was going to do, sit around drinking cocktails? He seemed quite chipper doing his work though.

Since the end of vintage we’ve had fair opening rains which has been a welcome break after a dry summer – I think we had about 50 mm. The creek filled nicely with rain, enough to warrant the wellies coming out and some serious paddling from the junior members of the team.

Louise has been out and about the country doing tastings and lunches, mainly for the fairer sex, as it happens. First up was a lunch at Sue Bell’s magnificent Glen Roy Shearing Shed and winery down in the Coonawarra. ’Sips in the Sticks’ was the final event of the inaugural Adelaide Food and Wine Festival, and was a cracker.

All lady winemakers had to provide dessert for the guests, and they were all judged by head of the local CWA (Country Women’s Association) Kate Spicer and Nick Ryan, wine writer and journalist for the Sunday Mail. Judging was intense and professional. That’s my pavlova in the bottom left hand corner of the photo.

Louise came out of the ring early, pretty confident if truth be told, informing all and sundry via Twitter that her pavlova was going to blow the competition out of the water. Ah, hubris hubris. The pavlova was dismissed by the inimitable Kate Spicer as ‘grainy’ (oh the shame) and the winner with her grandmother’s lemon delicious recipe was Corrina Wright from Oliver’s Taranga. Kerri Thompson from Wines by KT was disqualified with her gem cakes – not a dessert, KT.

This was a terrific event. The rest of the delicious food was prepared by Kate and the Penola CWA and Sue’s venue was wonderful. Thanks Sue for having us. Next up was Women Wine and Shoes up in Brisbane and in Melbourne, and though very different beasts, all events were belters. Thanks go to Jane and Sue from the Fabulous Ladies Wine Society for putting on two such well organised and entertaining nights.

Joch showed off our new Shiraz at the launch of the 2011 Scarce Earth Single vineyard Shiraz last Saturday at the Visitor Centre, but did not manage to get any photos. I think one of our number one fans Andrew Driscoll took a few – any chance you can send some on Andrew?! The two Battle of Bosworth 2011 Single Vineyard Shiraz – ‘Chanticleer’ and ‘Braden’s’ will be available for tasting and sale in cellar door soon. Finally, a silly photo of Joch in a little mini, taken by young Charlie Seppelt from Yangarra. Super Mario? Or Spanish Conquistador? Either or, that mo is going very soon.

The Final Countdown – #v13

21/03/2013

It gives me great pleasure to reference Swedish band Europe’s track ‘The Final Countdown’ in relation to the remaining few weeks of vintage (‘V13′) here at Battle of Bosworth. My, what a ride it’s been. There’s been some serious hard work and long hours put in to making our red wines for the very first time in our new winery. To be quite honest with you, I think the fellows have gone a bit, you know, doo-lally….

That’s Spencer in the background using the shovel to hide his underpants. Nairn in the foreground is smirking evilly. I think along with the other blokes, they convinced Spence that shoveling out the Dutchman’s Cabernet to press required disrobing. Don’t believe all you hear Spencer. Facial growth has been a strong feature of vintage 2013. As you see Nairn is sporting a fine vintage beard. Joch grew one ( and his hair, it didn’t look great) and now it’s gone, to be replaced by an SAS-style moustache. I posted this photo on my own Facebook page and got mixed reactions. Comments ranged from pegging Boz as Magnum PI (Tom Sellick), the strong man at a circus to Freddie Mercury. A gallop across the whole spectrum.

All that’s left to come off now from the vineyard is the Petit Verdot from the hill (up near cellar door- we always have to net this to keep the starlings off) and then we’re done. Then comes April with all it’s goings on. See earlier news posts to keep you up to date with events in the Coonawarra, Brisbane, Melbourne. We’ve also got the new release Scarce Earth Shiraz (2011) events coming up at the end of April. We received in the mail the trophy for the Best Preservative Free Wine that the 2012 Puritan won. Made in New Zealand, it’s a beauty and can be seen up in cellar door.

We had a visit from Florent Bouvier who helps sell our wines over in Sydney and the greater NSW area. Joch was merciless and poor Flo was put to work immediately he arrived, finishing at 11pm on day one, and working all the next in the heat, before we put him on the plane back to Sydney to be worked hard by his boss James at World Wine Estates. Thanks for coming Flo, and sorry for the mosquitos in your room :)

For those of you who are missing Ian in cellar door, calm down, he’ll be back very soon. Joch issued a compulsory work order, and stole Ian from cellar door for vintage duty, which is all well and good, but if I had a dollar for every cellar door customer who asked where ‘the big guy’ was, I’d have been able to shut up at lunch time and go home. Here to tantalise you Ian Adam fans is a shot of him foot stomping a ferment. Don’t look too closely at what it says on his T shirt, apparently it’s quite rude. See you back in your cellar door domain soon Ian.

Hopefully the next post will see all wines put to bed, and some bottling of new vintage wines complete. Louise is looking to bottle the 2013 Moscato pronto, ditto the 2013 Sauvignon Blanc and even the 2013 Puritan! Always something to do here.

The Halfway Mark

28/02/2013

Well, Joch reckons he has ‘broken the back of vintage’ – or he will have done by the end of the week. Smaller than anticipated amounts of grapes and a burst of warm weather ensuring everything came in on top of each other has resulted in a fairly compressed harvest. We’ve still got Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and a fair bit of Shiraz out there, but a lot of the hard work has already been done. Joch, Nairn, Ian, Spencer and Brenton have been working their proverbials off. See the boys below on a warm morning after finishing off picking the Braden’s Pinot.

We didn’t dare ask what the stains were on Ian’s T shirt (on the left.) We try to pick the whites at night to ensure we get them into the winery nice and cool, to preserve their gentle flavours. The guys were picking the Semillon, below, on a perfect picking evening.

We found someone to help us out taking temperatures (of the ferments) and checking beaumes (to see how the ferment is progressing) none other that the doyenne of MYOB and our very soon to be ex-bookkeeper (she gave us a year’s notice), Leonie Broadbridge. I honestly don’t think that there is anything in this world that Leonie can’t turn her hand to. Thanks Leonie.

Despite the long hours of toil, there’s always time to relax and have a laugh at some of the days events (bogged harvester, tractor door removed without notice etc etc) and here we see Joch on his favourite, the old David Brown, looking a little bit bush ranger but managing to see the funny side of things.

It looks as if all that happens here is making wine, well no, some of us have to strike out to sell some of it! Roxie, Emma and Louise headed off to the Adelaide Convention Centre for the 3 day Cellar Door festival, where we caught up with customers old and new. A very successful few days was had. Here’s Roxie on the stand…Who is prettier, Rox or those gladioli?!

Hopefully the next blog will herald the beginning of the end of harvest and the advent of autumnal weather and some serious stews, braises and a little osso bucco action in the kitchen. Hopefully there’ll be time for one last swim of the season, too.

First Crush at Battle of Bosworth Vintage 2013

14/02/2013

We had an exciting start to the week, with the first crush of grapes at our new winery shed. The winery shed was built by Tyrrell’s (of the Hunter Valley) about twenty years ago. We bought the winery and its adjacent vineyards, both of which are next door to our Orchard block, and took over in April last year. And here we are making wine on site. This event called for Monday morning bubbles, to celebrate.

There’s Paul ‘Rowdy’ Matthews above, ‘handing over’ to Joch. Rowdy stayed and gave some expert advise on how the winery operates, which was fantastic. Rowdy ran the place for 17 years, so he has a good store of knowledge. Peter and Anthea Bosworth came along for the gala event, see below, and that’s Ian ‘the Bomb’ Adam looking both Country AND Western in the middle of them.

You can see Ian backing up the tractor and gondola of Pinot to the receival hopper below; this was the drum roll bit for us! Be careful Ian, remember to drive slowly, and no random cornering….

Quite a few locals popped their heads in to see what was going on – that’s contractor and grape grower Clint Ledgard on the left on BoB stalwart Spencer. Clint has helped out over the years – I’m never sure of how it all works, but I do see him working on the old UR harvester quite a bit. I do believe Clint was very helpful last night while picking the Semillon, Spencer? Something about not enough diesel for the tractor pulling the harvester?! Thanks Clint.

Book keeper Leonie always likes to know what’s going on about the place, she came along to check on proceedings and to help celebrate. She had a few helpful tips about operations, too – there’s almost nothing Leonie does not know, across all disciplines.

So….from the gondola into the pristine, almost virginal receival hopper with the augur thing…. (technical stuff is not my specialty). Look how clean it is! Well done Nairn.

Then up the conveyor thing to be gently crushed (we treat the Pinot with kid gloves to preserve those light cherry and strawberry flavours)

Through some red hoses….on their way…

…into the fermenting vessel. Hoorah, well done guys, first ever ferment ready to start at our place. A very exciting Monday morning.

Well done Nairn – the man in charge of the winery.

As an aside, we also hand-picked about 30% of our Pinot into these flex cube thingummies below, so they can undergo some ‘carbonic maceration’. This process (the grapes ferment from within – they don’t go through the crusher) help keep tannins soft and approachable. This ‘cab mac’ component will be blended back to the Pinot grapes which underwent more traditional process, see above.

In other news, I had to cancel my trip back to the UK to (wo)man the stand at our UK importers annual tasting, Bibendum Wines ‘A Matter of Taste’. Our guinea pig, Snowball could have told me that a netball comeback in one’s mid 40′s probably wasn’t going to be sustainable in the long term, but I insisted and ended up with a fractured ankle. Ouch. I managed to draft in a wine savvy friend of an old university mate of mine to stand in and pour the wines and talk the talk. Jim Carey (look at the spelling!) actually visited the vineyards before Christmas on a wine and rellie visiting tour of OZ with his Australian partner. Sadly both Joch and I missed him here at the vineyards, but many thanks for being such a hardworking and dedicated extended member of the BoB staff. My old Uni mate Chaz apparently turned up for the glory at the end of what is a very long days tasting. Thanks Chazzie and many thanks Jim.

Finally, from a work health and safety perspective, at long last we have proper signage on the dunny up at cellar door! Thanks Spencer for supplying and applying – much more professional than the chalk.

High Rollers

16/01/2013

Well it’s nearly that time again. Vintage, or harvest, either term will do. It’s so close we can almost hear the old UR harvester starting up. Once we see Ted out putting netting over the Hill and Orchard Chardonnay, and Ding’s block Shiraz, it really is just around the corner. The bird netting machine Ted uses puts nets out over three rows at once and protects the grapes from the beaks of the dreaded starlings. A far better system than the one Joch remembers from about 10 + years ago, which involved manually stretching the nets over one row at a time, as well as some bending and stretching to tie the nets under the foliage.

The end result – grapes protected from bird damage, but with an unwelcome and almost week long side effect of screaming hamstrings from all that bending and stretching .

We’ve had a warm start to 2013, and as you can see above it’s looking pretty dry. I was digging through my photos and came upon this photo (below) of one of Graham’s Jersey cows from next door who broke through into our garden one day. As you can see it’s winter – look how green it is! The cow’s name is Naughty, which is very apt. Apparently as a calf she used to get out and head down to the golf course for some entertainment. Sounds a bit like a white Maremma dog we know…

2013 will see Battle of Bosworth make wine on site, which is very exciting. We now are the proud owners of a large shed next door to the Orchard block Chardonnay, in which Joch and our Kiwi import winemaker Nairn, will work their magic on our red grapes. Lots of work is being done in the shed – moving and installing big things like tanks, presses and fermenters. Lots of clanking sounds have been emanating from the shed, as well as some rich Anglo Saxon invective. Can’t muck about with heavy machinery without some swearing I suppose. That’s Nairn below in the main door of The Winery. Welcome aboard Nairn!

Nairn is not entirely new to us; he used to sell Battle of Bosworth wines in the noughties at Best Cellars in East Sydney, where he worked with the guerilla of Australian wine writing, Mike Bennie. Nairn has a remarkable repertoire in desserts (that’s puddings, to you Poms!) most of which can strip the enamel off your teeth within seconds of ingestion. Always inventive though – apparently it’s a Kiwi thing, so I’m told.

The festive period saw my evil Uncle Handyside arrive in style in his 1978 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. What a magnificent car. Not on the fuel efficiency front, I’ll grant you that, but there’s nothing like rolling up to lunch (to the lovely Currant Shed in McLaren Flat) in plush red leather seats. Marvellous stuff, thanks David. It adds a quiet sophistication to the cellar door as well I think.

It would have been grand to have had the Roller for my quick dash down to the south east for the Coonawarra Cup at Penola race course recently. I went as guest of Sue Bell of Bellwether Wines, and drove down with Kerri Thompson of Wines by KT riding shotgun. We would have looked very grand and not a little bit Mr Toad had we rolled up in the Shadow. Next time. By the way, the Coonawarra Cup was a belter of a day. As nice as McLaren Vale is, it’s great getting out to other regions to see how they do things. i put a few bets on the gee gees, and lost a little money. Thanks Sue! (Sue is far right of the piccie, Kerri is wearing her Grandmother Melva’s excellent hat and is poking through between Louise and Nick Stock .)

That’s all for now – next post will be on the flip side after vintage starts. I’m hoping that I will be back from my 4 nights in London before it all kicks off.

October in McLaren Vale

31/10/2012

October in McLaren Vale is jam-packed with activities. We have the McLaren Vale Wine Show, the Winemakers Bushing Lunch (where we find out the best wine of the show), and on top of all this, we’ve had a raft of visitors and a couple of trips away, which has pretty much filled the month to the gunnels.

Tim Wildman MW’s James Busby tour bus rolled into town the week before Bushing, bringing a group of high-powered wine industry professionals from all over the world. This year there were 5 Masters of Wine (MW’s) but despite their eminence, we still had them out catching squid in the early morning, followed by a tasting of the BoB wines, then a squid cook-up and culminating in a record group punt…..see below.

Punting is propelling oneself and one’s passengers languidly down the river in Cambridge in a flat -bottomed boat whilst wearing a straw boater and drinking Pimms, isn’t it? Not always the case, so we discovered. The definition we explored – as defined by Sydney based wine journalist, Mike Bennie – is drinking wine out of the punt of the bottle. This practice allegedly developed as a response to having a bottle of wine, but no glasses. I understand this group punt at Battle of Bosworth stands as a record in the annals of punting – both the amount of people, and the number of MW’s.

Judges for the 2012 MV wine show included Chair Tom Carson from Yabby Lake in the Mornington, Nick Ryan, Jim Chatto from the Hunter Valley and International Judge Edward Ragg from Beijing (@edwardragg for Twitter heads). The traditional ‘Meet the wine show judges’ pizza evening held at Primo Estate was once again a great success. This year we made the judges perform in a wine spitting contest. A necessary talent for a wine judge, but it’s quite a specialised spectator sport. Here’s Chair of Judges Tom Carson mixing it up – spitting AND twirling a tin tray….

The Bushing lunch is a intimate lunch for 600 of Mclaren Vale’s wine growing and making community and is ALWAYS heaps of fun – dressing up , catching up with people who you have not seen for 12 months, waiting for the announcement of the Best Wine of the McLaren Vale Wine Show, perhaps drinking too much….This year it was at Penny’s Hill, in a marquee in the back paddock. An excellent venue, thanks PH and co for having us.

And the winner of the Bushing Award for Best Wine of Show 2012 was Rosemount Estates with their Nursery Project Mataro 2011, well done Matt Koch and Andrew Locke. Andrew Locke below looks justifiably smug (Rosemount not only won the top gong, but 8 trophies and 8 gold medals.) Hoorah for Rosemount!

The very next day feeling a little worse for wear, Louise departed for Sydney to show the BoB and Spring Seed wines at a couple of tastings. First up was at the Sydney Fish markets for MUSSEL LOVE. Louise showed the new 2012 Spring Seed ‘Poppy’ Pinot Grigio, which matched really well with some of the delicious mussel dishes served up by Tom Kime, using Phil Lamb’s Spring Bay Mussels. Here’s Louise, Bodhi from Chapel Hill and Corrina from Oliver’s Taranga sporting splendid Mussel Love T-Shirts.

And then we got up the next day (after dining at the new Hemmes eating hall, Mr Wong – and seeing Hugh Jackman IN THE FLESH) and did it all again in the lane way behind Best Cellars and Love, Tilly Devine in East Sydney. Only this time, we were wearing yellow T-Shirts!

it was a great day, well done to Kooki etc and Radpublic (AKA Amanda James-Pritchard and Louise Radman) for putting the event together and Best Cellars and Love, Tilly Devine for hosting us. Next stop Christmas.

London May 2012

03/06/2012

England in spring is delightful, in spite of the 8 degrees and rainy weather conditions I encountered in the first week of my trip. It was about 5 degrees colder in the UK spring than back home in the Adelaide Autumn. However, the horse chestnut trees were out in full flower and they looked magnificent.

The forget-me-not were out too, and were very pretty - I recognised them from our Spring Seed ‘Forget-me-not’ Sauvignon Blanc Semillon label. They are much better in the flesh though.

I headed off to the London Wine Trade fair in the second week. The London Wine and Spirits Fair is held every year over 3 days at the end of May. This was the first time for a long time – 7 years in fact – that I had visited. The last time I came over was with Joch and the 5 month old Celia, who was refused admittance into the main part of the fair because she was under 18…. Anyhow, the show seemed smaller than I remember, although the venue ExCel out in the Docklands is enormous. Battle of Bosworth was not there in it’s entirety, but represented on our importer Bibendum’s Taste Wall. Bibendum have a big impressive stand, with wifi, always a bonus when you are OS and have your data download function turned off. Divine light appeared to be radiating down on the stand as you can see below.

The Puritan Shiraz {no added preservative} was on the Taste wall, an impressive wall of wine designed to help people find out what style of wine they like, and then how to translate that to help the consumer choose the wines they like. Puritan was labelled ‘fruity New World red’. I did query the word ‘fruity’ in connection to the Puritan, to which a passing Bibendum stalwart, Willie Lebus answered ‘but darling, you are fruity’. Indeed. The Johnny Cash reference below the wine however (see below) more than made up for the ‘fruity’ sobriquet.

Being at large events like the LIWF generally provides a great chance to catch up with old chums. I caught up with Mark Denison from Hallgarten wines, who I worked with when I was at Penny’s Hill. I also saw Paul Stratford who first introduced Battle of Bosworth wines into the UK market nearly 10 years ago. Also spotted were former Stratford men Marcus, Ed and Mark Boardman (who got married in the garden at BoB some years ago). Most exciting to see was Charlie Holland, brother of a great friend of mine, who is winemaker at English wine producer RidgeView. I went along to the seminar Charlie was hosting, and tasted a range of the Ridgeview sparkling wines, which were terrific. I resisted the strong urge to heckle Charlie, for which I think he was truly thankful.

I like to think Charlie cut his winemaking teeth back in McLaren Vale some 10 + years ago, when he was our lodger and worked vintage (harvest) at Tatachilla Winery, back in its glory days. Charlie drove an old white Holden ute of Joch’s (‘Snowy’), which did not have windscreen wipers, and was a ‘three on the tree’ (the gear stick was on the steering column). We would listen every morning and smile to ourselves as Charlie attempted to reverse out of the drive way. Any gear would have done Charlie. Great wines from Ridgeview and a fantastic presentation.

Crisps are what the English call chips. I tried a packet of this brand which I bought at the Fair (the salt and vinegar version) and they were good. I especially liked the ‘Made by Farmers’ part of the label, but would not dare show them to Joch. If ever Joch is interviewed by anyone, he always describes himself as a ‘Grape Farmer’, which makes me shudder, as I want him to say ‘Vigneron’. I think Vigneron more accurately describes what he does, and lends his job a certain romance and gravitas which is lacking in the term ‘grape farmer’. I think if he saw these chips (crisps) he’d get wild ideas about changing our labels. Crisp packet safely in a London bin near Baron’s Court tube station.

I lunched at Gordon’s Wine Bar (‘oldest wine bar in London’ according to its website) near the Embankment, and it reminded me very much of Chessar Cellars in Adelaide, what with the buffet lunch on offer and all. You could either eat out on the walkway or in the cellars underneath. For the history and literature buff, the building which houses Gordon’s was home to Samuel Pepys in the 1680′s. There were lots of wines and sherries available on the list but all I managed was a little Muscadet de Sevre et Maine and a lot of sparkling water, owing to extreme fragility as a result of a late night run-in with this beautiful Nicaraguan rum pictured below. One glass would have been enough.

Last thought from London concerns chocolate. My generous host while I was in London took me to Belgravia for dinner at a pub called the Pantechnicon on Motcomb Street, which apparently is around the corner from the shop which sells Rococo Chocolate. Great packaging (though maybe not the lightest of environmental footprints what with the heavy cardboard box) but great chocolate, which was used as an antidote to the Nicaraguan Rum, the next day.

Ragtag Reportage

28/04/2012

Battle of Bosworth were the support act at local restaurant Fino, for Delicious Magazine’s Produce awards. Lunch was excellent, thanks David and Sharon and the wines were pretty good too.

Bozzie was on duty, and had a chat with Michael Smith from ABC 891 about the wines he showed (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Best of Vintage and ‘Clarence’ sticky Semillon). Louise just ate and drank. Ian Adam who works cellar door here at BoB won the lucky door prize, a copy of Valli Little’s recent book.

Joch and Louise had a visit from Trudi Jenkins, Editor -in-Chief of Delicious Magazine the next day at cellar door, so it was lucky they had not just returned 20 minutes earlier from a sleepover at Langhorne Creek, stinking of bonfire and wearing the same clothes they had worn at lunch the previous day. Authentic, that’s what we are.

Louise caught up with uber-bloggers Patrick Haddock (www.winingpom.com.au @winingpom) and Andrew Graham (www.ozwinereview.com.au, @ozwinereview) at the Elbow Room restaurant on Branson road. Chef is ex-d’Arry’s Verandah Nigel Rich and the food was excellent. That Bosworth Chardonnay was good too, although after 3 weeks with kids on school holidays I think Louise would rather it was in her glass not lying next to the entree.

The boys (plus other members of the fourth estate) were in town to taste the 2010 Scarce Earth Single Vineyard Shiraz wines (all 28 of them). McLaren Vale Scarce Earth wines explores the geological, climatic and soil diversity of the region. All wines come from a single block, a small plot of land with a unique flavour profile and personality. Those last two sentences were lifted from the official blurb that MV Grape Wine and Tourism provided us with, not my words, but you get the drift.

Joch is at the old Tatachilla Winery as this blog post is typed, showing off the 2010 Battle of Bosworth Chanticleer Single Vineyard Shiraz and the 2010 Battle of Bosworth Braden’s Vineyard Single Vineyard Shiraz. Note the nice new banner which Louise finally succumbed to buying.

The two Battle of Bosworth Scarce Earth wines will be available in cellar door from May 1st onwards. They will be available as a pigeon pair, allowing the purchaser to compare and contrast the wines in light of their differening geology and soil types. It’s a fascinating exercise. To our mind Chanticleer is more floral and Braden’s has more earth and chacuterie on the nose….

We had some rain last weekend (30mm in fact), which was very welcome. As a true countryman Joch knew this was coming, not by looking at the Elders Weather website, but by having a bogong moth fly into his head and nearly knock him out. These giant moths only come out when rain is imminent, and then only have about 24 hours to go about their breeding business before they pop their clogs. Speed dating extraordinaire. I googled bogong moths just now, and the site did not mention their abbreviated sex life, so maybe Joch was lying. Whatever the story, they are a big moth.

And finally, while we’re in this corner of the paddock, we had visitors in the vineyard the other day down near Snake Gully. It is a bit cliched, but everyone loves a kangaroo.