Looks garagiste doesn’t it?
The demijohn in the photo to the right contains 20 litres of wine, my wine, my first ever wine actually, and as I speak, said wine is completing it’s malolactic fermenation in my suburban garage, just metres from where I sit right now.
Which, ipso facto, makes my garage a winery, and me a winemaker.
And I love it.
The wine itself may not end up amounting to much, and at this stage it smells volatile to the point of fault and tastes frighteningly tannic, but just the process itself, the process of turning grapes into wine, is one of the most exciting things that any wine lover can ever undertake.
What has made this all the more involved is that each and every step of the process was done by hand. Hand picked, hand destemmed, hand crushed even hand pressed. Not just any hands either but my hands (ok, I did get another pair of hands to help pick and destem).
And I loved it.
5 Comments
It looks pretty potent. Which vineyard did you source the grapes from?
Sourced from the Quarry Road vineyard on the highway in Murrambateman.
The Shiraz from my little project would now be a component in the Clonakilla O'Riada or Jack Reidy blends, so if said wines are a few dozen short this year, you know who to blame…
Also known as Quarry Hill…
http://www.quarryhill.com.au
The shiraz pick this year looks really, really good. Picked a bit later than when Andrew grabbed his fruit, it's gone off to Clonakilla and Collector Wines. Alex McKay has 2.5 tonnes of QH shiraz goodness to make into table wine and sparkling shiraz base for the Quarry Hill label. The final pick of five rows of shiraz went off to clients in the Hunter Valley.
Hope the wine turns out well for you Andrew, and thanks for that excellent bottle of cab-shiraz.
Thanks Paul,
It was great fruit, wish I could say the same about my winemaking abilities…
Haven't haven't the chance to try Quarry Hill but I know Alex is a top winemaker. And I'm a local, so I'll keep an eye out for it.