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You picked a dandy year to start! A lot of the fruit around Heathcote was wiped out, especially the Cab Sav and Grenache, simply couldn't get the machinery into the vineyards until December. I only planted my vines last year so no fruit was lost TF. How did it taste going into the keg?

Hey mjcrow, looks like you have a cracker of a property. If you're ever looking for help and willing to pay in grapes, send me a DM on here. I'm in Heathcote (Central Vic), and always keen to give someone a hand and try some fruit from somewhere like EV! I've made about 4 whites before, and can...

I must say that I'm insanely jealous of the range of fruit that you have access too. Over here we have whatever you are lucky enough to find, which is usually just Shiraz.

Over here in Oz you would have no hope. Grenache is so wildly popular with drinkers that it is impossible to find it available. There was a producer here in Heathcote that making you buy 3 tonnes of Shiraz fruit if you wanted to buy a tonne of Grenache. Downy wiped out what little is in the ground.

I've never even HEARD of this before. Great read 👍

That is such a foreign concept here in Australia!

I've been tossing up the use of bags when my vines start bearing fruit in a couple of years, as I'm trying to limit the use of pesticides as my yard borders a protected wetlands and we have a bazillion birds around the place. Given that I only have 90-odd vines, is there any other disadvantage...

I would never press on taste, more on time spent on skins, the data, and my life schedule, in that order. Taste is profoundly dependent on our neurophysical environment at the time and how it influences our mind/sensory interface, how you are feeling and your physical state will so easily...

I'm like you Kitchen I ferment in large food-grade bins. Always macerate to between 21-28 days, and haven't yet experienced any problems. Once the cap stops rising, I carefully transfer to 20L buckets so that each is totally full, then place a lid on them firmly without being fully sealed...

We've been pretty lucky, but quite a few of my students and people I work with have been inundated. Noone hurt though, touch wood. Things still pretty crazy 50km downstream from us though.

Roads everywhere around here are closed, can hear the chopper every hour or so with another load of food and generators, dropping them off at the racecourse from what I hear. Oh yeah, every town here has a racecourse. We've got a text message to say we might get 90 minutes of power tomorrow...

Is there anything on the news anywhere about what the hell is happening here in northern Victoria? We have copped an enormous amount of rain in the past week and currently experiencing the 1% flood, or '100 year flood' here around the Shepparton region. Our power was turned off last night, no...

Apart from the fact that article is pretty much an opinion piece, isn't the amount of CO2 coming from the wine still relatively high well after fermentation has slowed down?

Fantastic read. I'm 4 years in and absolutely looking to close the gap a bit. Have started giving a local wonery some free labour in exchange for some of his premium fruit come March (in Aus). I haven't tried saignee yet so I'm definitely going to give that a go. Not so sold on the cold soak...

So jealous you guys can get barrels so bloody easily. Here in Oz it's basically impossible to get anything under 225L, so I had to buy one of those, break it down, somehow jam 4 x 30L plastic drums into it, then put the bloody thing back together. Now I have a 100L barrel, just with a shit-ton...

I recently did this as well. Mine had a couple of decent cracks and took over a week and a half to seal. Good luck with round 2, stick with it 👍

The US is one country that we just can't seem to get access to down here. Finally getting over there in '26 for the World Cup and you better believe i'll be slamming your wines into my face hole as fast as gravity allows for the whole month!

If they do let us know!

"If a yeast is known for strong tropical aromas of pineapple and guava, you may not want to pair that with Cabernet Sauvignon." Not sure you have to worry too much about any strain of yeast imparting strong tropical aromas of pineapple and guava, or anything else for that matter 🤨

You can't just buy wine from an overseas source and have it sent to you in the States can you?