Today we harvested our first grapes for red wine, a 1 hectare parcel of Syrah. The tasting and testing we’ve done on these grapes indicates that they’re beautifully ripe and should give a wine of about 13-13.5%. Our second parcel of Syrah is only about 500 meters away but has a less open sunny aspect and is some days away from picking – “terroir” again!
About 6 tonnes of grapes were machine harvested this morning with Jack, me and Steve processing them at the winery. Actually processing is a bit too grand a word for it. The grapes go through the destemmer and then are gently pushed along a thick pipe into a large tank where they will ferment over the coming days. The tank currently looks like it contains a pretty solid mass of shiny black berries…..