The Winery
The winery itself is no more than a steel shed, but the important part is the winemaking process and philosophy, which Tony sees as inspired by the traditional French techniques, but taking advantage of modern scienctific understanding of chemistry and microbiology, both strongpoints brought from his background in medicine.
The winemaking is very "hands-on" with the The whole family (and extended family, the minimum of mechanisation, let alone automation.
The grapes are picked into buckets which are brought in a trailer up to the winery directly from the vineyard.
The grapes are weighed as received in buckets, and the marc is taken away in the trailer to be composted on the farm
The red grapes are crushed directly into open fermentors.
The crusher directly over the open fermentor again avoids over-handling the grapes.
The press is a modern membrane type, which enables the juice to be extracted with the minimum of pressure and maceration of the grape skins. With white varieties, including Pinot Grigio, and for sparkling wines, this avoids extraction of harsh tannins and of excessive colour from the skins.
The white grapes are then directly tipped into the press still whole.
Directly tipping buckets into the membrane press without crushing
This new technology emulates the effect of gently crushing the grapes by human feet and taking only the very best "cut" of juice from gently pressing the grapes.
After pressing our approach diverges from a "standard" Australian approach by allowing a mild amount of juice oxidation at ambient temperatures (say 16 deg C), without the use of inert gases or mechanical refrigeration. On the one hand this is only possible because of the naturally cool temperatures (In April not February), and on the other hand because of the careful grape handling, with no significant delay between hand picking and the pressing, and no trauma from mechanical harvesting, or even tipping from buckets into bulk bins.
Fermentation for most wines is conducted at ambient temperatures, is aimed at producing wines with vinosity rather than purely fruitiness. Also our small batches are less likely to overheat badly than the huge ones at industrial wineries.
This is also a major saving in energy and carbon emissions as refrigeration is normally the single biggest energy user in large wineries.
Bottling is conducted on site using a mobile bottling plant which brings all the sophisticated equipment to our winery in a caravan. The unit is setup in the parking area next to the winery, and the bottling takes place under direct winemaker supervision.
