Nikki at RedHeads - last day

Last day – a busy one ... what did I expect!

My last day helping Dan at RedHeads : (

I could tell as soon as I arrived, Dan had big plans for the day. He was buzzing around already. Nice to meet his Dad, Ralph, popped up from Riverina, Dan's home. Ralph is a winemaker too. See if you can spot him in the picture down the page.

Ebb and flow, pattern and rhythm
I've come to understand a few things over the last two weeks. There's a certain pattern and rhythm and logic to everything that goes on in the winery at vintage. Receive (or fetch) the grapes, destem them and get them into vat, plunge and let them ferment in their own good time. Drain the juice, press the rest, get all the batch of wine into tank. Then, for the majority, pump it into barrel. This is, of course, simplified and takes some weeks.

Short on pump capacity, Dan said we'd need to collect the
wine from the basket press in a bucket and carry it to tank
– call these wines handcrafted? You bet!

If you're not careful, you get a blockage ... not enough tanks, need quickly to get onto cleaning the barrels and filling them, to clear some tank space, so you can drain and press.

We were very pleased to have extra hands for cleaning the barrels
and filling them – Mark Hoddy from Bordeaux's Le Chai

Well, today we did it all! Plunging, it's as normal as breathing and coffee in the morning. Clear the cake from the press. Clean some barrels and fill them, six in total today. Two new, as well – a French and an American – to hold the gorgeous Dogs of the Barossa Shiraz. Powerful stuff. As you fill the new barrels, they do give off an awesome toasty, vanilla and oak aroma.

You have to watch the level of the wine rising very carefully as
you fill the barrel ... here, it's Dan busy at the task,
and can you spot Dan's dad behind him?

And I thought, just before I left, I'd empty out another large coffin container. Well, it was my favourite-smelling fermentation vat – the chunky Durif, black-as-your-hat, smelt very dark, chocolaty and spicy. They couldn't keep me out!

Looks small, I can assure you it wasn't.
There's a certain satisfaction in getting it done.
90 minutes roundabout, not bad! Smelt great

I popped out to the Elderton winery (top wine is the world-famous Command) straight after, luckily looking in a mirror first as my face was smeared with wine splashes – a bit of a sight. And no, I didn't bother taking a picture of that!

Hey Dan. It's been a really great two weeks. Thanks for putting up with me. Hope I was more help than hindrance and that the rest of the vintage goes really well. I look forward to tasting the finished wines.

And also that you get a day off soon!

Nikki at RedHeads - bathing in it is good for you

Bathing in it is good for you, and Le Chai's Mark lends a hand

As I bucketed out my third coffin container (I found out they hold about 2.5 tonnes of fruit – sounds a lot to me!) this morning – smelt nice, so I wasn't complaining – Mark H, winemaker from Bordeaux, came up and said "in Bordeaux, in Smith Haut Lafite to be precise, they pay a lot of money to bathe in this stuff" ... that is the grape juice and skins etc. And I was getting it for free! And I wasn't bathing in it either, by the way!

Having enjoyed such a warm, sunny weekend, today's very cold (about 9°) temperatures were a bit of a shock. Much more like home. Oh : (

Good to have another professional in the
building – Mark H from Le Chai, Bordeaux

However, it's been great today to have Mark Hoddy from our Bordeaux winemaking headquarters, Le Chai au Quai, assisting at RedHeads. It really helped us get through the pressing.

Mark H and Dan talking shop

And that was lucky as the afternoon involved a bomb over in the Ute to the McLaren Vale, to do a quick tasting. I was keen to take another look at the McLaren – I haven't been there for 20 years. Prettier, more hilly than the Barossa, with the vines on slopes. Altogether it has smaller feel.

 

The boys checking out the Cabernet grapes at Jeff Erkhart's vineyard

On the way we stopped at the Erkhart vineyard from which Dan is hoping to pick up some Cabernet. And the berries were still tiny and nowhere near ripe. It's flipping cold too, until the weekend they say, so not much prospect of that this side of Easter.

 

The Cabernet berries were
very small and only 12° baume

Dan and Mark tasting some McLaren wines

No chance of scenic shots .... Dan was driving fast. I could have got a shot of Hahnsdorf town as we stopped there – silly me. It's extremely Germanic in every way. No surprise as the first settlers were from there. Of course, we had to sample a stein of beer.

Only one day to go : (

Nikki at RedHeads - it's a matter of logistics

It poured in the night ... well, so it sounded at least. Just 1mm according to Dan, so nothing of note or anything much to disturb the Mataro grapes still hanging out.

Plunging this morning, the Saperavi had got going on its ferment and was looking good.

 

The vat of Saperavi was looking
lively, frothing purple with its daily plunge

The Merlot from Domaine Day was smelling delicious too – really creamy plum and toffee notes.

Dan wanted to get a few vats through pressing, so before I knew it I was back in the coffin container (they are big) bucketing the Shiraz into Nally bins so we could get press the skins, juice, pulp in the basket press. It was a nicer ferment to bucket out than the Grenache – it smelled of chocolaty black fruit and there were less whole bunches which made it easier.

No bee stings today and about 2 hours later it was done.

And this is what my feet (and hands, but I couldn't do a picture of both!) looked like:

Shiraz feet – and my hands looked exactly
the same, worse in fact, and now have a dirty
black hue to them

After that I certainly deserved our lunch. I'm normally a bit cagey about sardines, having come a cropper in Portugal once, with fresh, grilled ones. This, however, was a delicious mix. The spelt wraps are really thin, rectangle – how sensible is that! – the tinned sardines have to be Portuguese and preferably spicy, with salad, a bit of harissa paste, and lots of other bits and bobs. Fab.

Ingredients for our spelt sardine wraps

It was a busy afternoon – pressing, running out of tank space, so cleaning and filling barrels to create some.  I realise now there are a lot of logistics involved.

I left feeling macerated in everything to do with wine – wine, juice, skins – plus a fair amount of water spray from the cleaning, and fair-do's tired.

Another lovely day at RedHeads.

Nikki at RedHeads - four visitors and Saperavi

Big day – four visitors to RedHeads, plus a small load of Saperavi 

The cellar was looking spick and span first thing this morning, ready for visitors. We managed to score four in total – Nick, merchandising director, and Tom Laithwaite, both from Laithwaite's UK, Dan Parrott, our global buyer for Australia, and Mark Hoddy – normally winemaker at Le Chai, but seconded to Tindalls in the McLaren Vale for the 2015 harvest. None bar Tom had ever been to RedHeads at its new Barossa home, so it was good to get them out to see exactly what it was about firsthand and what was being made.

We had a major posse of visitors to RedHeads this morning.
From left to right, Nick, Dan G, Dan P, Tom (hiding), Mark. Dan G
gave them a walk round the cellar and a tasting of the range – from
2015 Viognier and Marsanne and Rosé, through to the awesome 2015 Malbec,
the whopping Barossa Shiraz, various, and 2013 Hoffy Cabernet

Dan G gave them a brief walk round the winery – it's not big, just very effective, then gave them a tasting of what was in progress from the new 2015 vintage, some still fermenting, others, namely the terrific dark, spicy Malbec, just into barrel. And also a sample of the 2013 Hoffman Cabernet which was inky black and pungent with really intense cassis overlaid by the vanilla toast of the oak. The visitors were impressed; Dan G was very pleased. It was a good morning.

Late morning, Dan and I had some grapes to pick up from grower Robin Day, out in Mount Crawford, close to Williamstown. Robin grows an amazing range of grapes – Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Garganega (aka Soave grape), Riesling, plus a bit of Merlot we were collecting and also Saperavi. Heard of it? It's an ancient Georgian grape.

 

Saperavi grapes – an ancient variety that originates from Georgia

It's difficult to tell from this close up shot, but the berries are very small and the colour of the juice very intense – part of the reason for taking it.

 

Robin Day has been growing offbeat grape varieties
at his family estate for decades

Robin's estate lies in a beautiful, undulating
part of the Barossa, in Mount Crawford, where he grows many more unusual varieties

That done, it was back to the winery to press out some more wines. Dan tried us on a new method – pouring the grape skin pulp down the chute, into the basket press. It worked was less manual, but we decided bucketing it out by hand into the basket press was much quicker and more effective.

Pouring the pulp down the chute into the
basket press (hiding under the plastic sheet). It
worked, it just wasn't terribly quick!