McLaren Vale « Battle of Bosworth Wines

Posts Tagged ‘McLaren Vale’

Meet Your (Wine) Maker

04/05/2013

Each year as a region McLaren Vale brings down an assortment of restaurateurs and retailers from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and sometimes even WA! They spend a couple of days and nights here tasting wine, doing masterclasses, going up in a helicopter and generally getting a real taste of the food and wine culture of our fine region. The clever folk at McLaren Vale’s Grape Wine and Tourism Association devise an invitation each year to send out to the invitees. This year it’s a little more tricky than usual. Can you spot any familiar faces?

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.

2011 McLaren Vale Scarce Earth Shiraz Launch Saturday 27th April

20/04/2013

Tickets are available for the launch of the 2011 McLaren Vale 2011 Scarce Earth Single Vineyard Shiraz. This is the third release of these wines. In the words of Stacey who works at the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Assoc, please find details about the Scarce Earth project below:

Scarce Earth is an initiative of the McLaren Vale wine region exploring and celebrating 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.

Join us for a unique opportunity to taste the new release 2011 Vintage McLaren Vale Scarce Earth single vineyard Shiraz wines from 12:00 pm – 4pm at the beautiful grounds of the McLaren Vale & Fleurieu Visitor Centre on the 27th April 2013. Tickets are $25 and include all tastings, tasting notes, master classes and refreshments.

Joch will be on duty all day, showing off our 2011 Battle of Bosworth 2011 Braden’s Scarce Earth and 2011 Chanticleer Scarce Earth Single Vineyard Shiraz. You can compare and contrast our two wines, as well as taste over 20 other McLaren Vale shiraz. Our wines are both made using Shiraz from the same underlying geologies, but with radically different soil types. Chanticleer is on the free-draining stony loam soils, and Braden’s comes from the Bay of Biscay black cracking soils.

To book your tickets simply head to the McLare Vale website which you can do by clicking here. Make sure you head over and say g’day to Joch!

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 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.