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How quickly a year goes by. I now have my 2019 Grenache happily fermenting away. We’ve had a tough year this year, extreme heatwaves and a summer that’s been4 degrees Celsius above average overall with very little rainfall, so picked March 3, 2 and a bit weeks earlier than last vintage...

I decided on a whim to grab some Shiraz from the Adelaide Plains after work this past Thursday. Mostly because it was ridiculously cheap at $600 a tonne and they hand picked for me. Plus I have been itching to get stuck into vintage. As I’m going to be making some old vine Grenache again and...

Has anyone tried making an Amarone style wine from grapes and not a kit? I’ve seen quite a few threads on kits but wondering if anyone’s gone to the effort of drying their own grapes to give it a proper crack. Vintage for me is coming up in late February-March and I’m toying with the idea of...

Wife goes out tonight so I decide to do some racking. All up 3 gallons loquat to secondary. 3 gallons strawberry first racking from secondary (lost almost a gallon to lees), and 15 gallons of Grenache final racking to 2x 6 gallon carboys (not pictured) and bottled the remainder that was clear...

Had a stroke of luck with my future bottling today. I happen to work with a fella who runs his own little winery and we've both taken an interest in what each other are doing. So today we're having a chat about bottling and he's offered for me to bring my wines down to his place and use his...

The loquats around my home are starting to ripen now. About 5 trees on my street so I have started picking them. Currently have 6 pounds of seeded fruit in the freezer. I'm thinking of doing 20 pounds seeded fruit for a 3 gallon batch. Haven't settled on recipe yet just gathering the fruit...

Long story short some scumbags put needles in strawberries here in Australia and I managed to score a heap of fruit for less than half regular price (fruit is bloody expensive here). So I decided to have a crack at a Strawberry wine as I've always been interested and now was the time. Here...

Picked up this old Italian floor corker today for $27. Money well spent I reckon. Will still be some time before I get to use it but that gives me plenty of time to collect another 100 odd bottles I need.

Picked and crushed a 1/4 tonne of old vine Grenache from Mclaren Vale yesterday. Fruit came from 60-70 year old dry grown bush vines. Was bloody hard work doing all the work by hand but got there in the end. Got the fruit crushed and pitched Lalvin 2226 rhone yeast. Left 15% as whole bunches...

Thought it was about time I dropped by and said hello to my fellow forumites. I'm Mike from South Australia. Fairly new to winemaking but been brewing for 15 odd years. So far made some mead, ginger wine, blackberry and mulberry wines. The mead turned out fantastic and the berry wines need more...