Vintage 2017 - in season update.

Wet winter has vintage on track.

McLaren Vale Agronomist and Winemaker James Hook said his region was running about three weeks behind recent years, making it more akin to typical seasons in the 1990s, meaning most of the grapes will be picked in March.

“As soon as the weather got warm they grew very quickly so they probably did two month’s worth of growth in one month – it’s really accelerated growth because they had a belly full of water in winter and spring and it took a long time for the weather to warm up,” he said.

“We’re looking at a larger vintage again like last year.

“If the summer doesn’t turn into a scorching heatwave I think it will be a very good year. At the moment the Bureau of Meteorology is predicting average conditions so if that happens over the next two or three months it will be good for quantity and quality, which both sides of the market like – the grape growers get good tonnage and the consumer likes it as well because they get good wine.

“People are fairly optimistic and from a weather point of view if we get average weather from here it will be a good year.”

Full article:  http://www.theleadsouthaustralia.com.au/industries/primary-industries/wet-winter-has-australian-wine-regions-in-good-shape-for-strong-2017-vintage/

How is Vintage 2017 looking?

How is Vintage 2017 shaping up? Does rain affect grapes? What does a thunderstorm do to a vineyard?

Lazy Ballerina owner James Hook answers here. 

Career Day Podcast with James.

Follow to listen to the interview with James

http://careerdayshow.com/669/moments-notice-2/

Whether making decisions with outcomes you don’t see for a couple years, capturing once in a lifetime events, or showing up at just the right time… we’ll see how three people successfully juggle time, family, and happiness.

Vale Cru

Inviting you to our Vale Cru Long Lunch lunch at the Victory Hotel on November 20th.

Four course menu, 16 wines, great company - $100 pp.

TRYBOOKING LINK:

https://www.trybooking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=236198I

 Lazy Ballerina: With James Hook, Miriam Bourne and daughter Emmaline

What is one of the wines you will you present?

The 2010 Lazy Ballerina Shiraz

What can we expect?
This is a very good example of a mature Shiraz that’s had five years of bottle age. It’s half way through its ageing; you could open it in another five years and it will still be very drinkable.

I chose this wine because it’s a typical McLaren Vale Shiraz with blackcurrant, red and dark fruit characters. And 2010 was an uncomplicated growing season, it wasn’t too harsh on the vines. No heat waves and no serious rain events. It was an enjoyable wine to make and it’s an enjoyable wine to drink.

What are you looking forward to?
Seeing all the different years and different styles – and an opportunity to be part of the tasting experience.

Other years we’ve held exhibitions but this year, with the format being a long lunch, we can taste each other’s wine and share that experience with guests.

Many of the wines were made in tiny qualities, so they’re just not around much, so I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to seeing what they’re like.

Why does McLaren Vale Shiraz taste like chocolate?
All the flavours in wine come from either the grapes themselves, the barrel or the yeast.

Soil?
Soil influences everything, but it’s not like the soil tastes like chocolate; it’s not a direct flavour that gets dug out of the ground. It’s a complicated flavour that isn’t attributed to one source. And neither is chocolate. That’sa combination of dairy and beans.
Fruit, oak and yeast: when you see that chocolate flavour in our wines you’re getting a combination of these elements.

Vale Cru Degustation Lunch @ The Victory

Vale Cru's annual showcase of hand crafted, small batch wines is on again at the Victory Hotel in the beautiful McLaren Vale wine region. Tickets are $100 per person and available through trybooking.com (Vale Cru at the Victory).

Real People: James Hook

James' interview with Graeme Goodings

Lazy Ballerina is now open Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

2016 Vintage Report

Vintage Report by James Hook

The grapes are in... What will the wines be like? Read report to know what has influenced the wines for this year.

Vintage 2016 will be remembered for a warm and dry spring, which promoted shoot growth and flowering, followed up by heavy rain immediately before harvest which helped boost vineyard yields. At harvest vines produced some of the bigger crops we have seen since 2004, but they generally weren’t overcropped as vine growth was balanced.

The reported harvest from McLaren Vale was 40,997 tonnes in 2016, 12,000 tonnes above the 2015 harvest and 21% above the five year average crush.

The warm spring and early summer days and nights ensured that vines grew well and then set well. The 2015/16 growing season had some similarities with the lean 2006/07 and 2007/08 seasons. In all three, growing season rainfall was less than 50% of the long term average.

Overall, rainfall for winter was lower than average, due to a dry June 2015, and this was followed by long dry periods where no effective rain fell until the first week of February. Disease pressure was generally low due to the long dry periods, following on from dry 2013 and 2014 springs as well. Irrigation application was vital to crop health and the local recycled water system, that supplies 45-50% of the region’s irrigation water, was stretched. Rationing of this water source was flagged in January but fortunately full allocations were maintained.

Growers were able to compensate for the shortfall in rainfall with improved irrigation techniques and an uninterrupted supply. White grape harvest started at the end of January, with sparkling base wines and vineyards destined for light white wine styles.

At the beginning of February, immediately before the bulk of the region was to be harvested, McLaren Vale had double its average monthly rainfall over two days due to one storm. However, far from having a negative effect, the intense rain event increased the bunch weight of crops at harvest and relieved any water stress on the vines. The rain also delayed the start of red grape picking into the middle of February. March had above average rainfall, but fortunately this fell after a high percentage of harvest was complete. Powdery Mildew flared up and Botrytis increased but only on the latest picked fruit.

James Hook.

Encouraging your children to dream big.

We are not experts in work/life balance. Far from it. Balancing work and our personal lives is difficult.

2kw

We are witnessing a generational shift in our attitudes to work. Millennials (those born after 1980) are more likely than their elders to blur the lines between work and home. Some 81% of them think they should set their own work patterns. For some, that might involve virtual meetings (by Skype, for example) rather than real ones, the opportunity to work from home when they want to and, ideally, a no-recrimination clause in their contract that would be activated when they tell their boss to shove it when she asks them to work next Sunday.

What happens To our business over the next few years will be determined by little Emmy. What does she want form her life? Right now that is having fun with her parents. Dream big. 

Meadows Creek in flood.

Dingabledinga, our localities name, is thought to mean place of much water in the local indigenous language.

Reynella - The History of McLaren Vale Wine #1

Reynella. They named a town after him. He must have been pretty important in his day. Town founder.

The story of Reynella is well known, as it should be, it is the first story in what compiled becomes the history 'McLaren Vale wine'. Of course at the start it was nothing so grand. There was no marketing, no parades and no wine shows, just one man, his wife and a section of land in the Hurtle Vale.

Even early in our wine history if you were into viticulture in South Australia you owed a debt to John Reynell. He was the first settler to fence his property, on of the first settlers to plant a vineyard and the first to dig a wine cellar. Most notably, in 1850, he took on a young man named Thomas Hardy to help him to tend to the vineyards. By the 1860's he had twenty odd vintages under his belt.

Fellow McLaren Vale wine pioneers Dr Alex C. Kelly and George Manning got their inspiration from John Reynell. The three regularly traded grape cuttings, wine and ideas.

Sir James Hardy, the great grandfather of Thomas Hardy, reflected in 1984, on the day that Thomas walked down John Reynell's driveway and asked for a job. He wondered what they would have thought about the wonders of 1980's wine technology.

Sir James said,"I wonder what they would have thought about what we are doing today..."

I would answer, they would have been amazed by our technology, but we should be equally amazed that they made grape growing work without it, in a hostile land, without anything more complicated than a horse, cart and hand tools. These were flesh and blood people. Creative, bold and daring.

I think John would be amazed we remember him.

The first vintage John Reynell produced was in 1842, in a time before yeast was discovered and he built the Old Cave cellar in 1845. This was his low tech version of temperature control.

The cellar survives in part of the grounds of Accolade Wines Australia Head Office.

John Reynell was born in Bristol, England, on February 9, 1809. After his father’s death when he was only 14, Reynell left England and worked in Egypt, America, Europe and Russia. He worked to better himself.

At age 29 he emigrated to South Australia, arriving in 1838. He had a shipboard romance and married fellow-passenger, Mary Lucas, in 1839.

Reynell's tough working life had given him a strong sense of resourcefulness. He was a capable, strong minded man, and with the support of his wife, he was an ideal pioneer.

Reynell as a young man.

John Reynell's own letters claim he was the first settler to enclose his entire 80-acre (32 ha) section of settlement land. A little later he had to cut his fences to allow for the alignment of a proposed road for the passage of a regular mail run to Encounter Bay which was established by the end of 1839.

The path that the mail route took became the 'Great South Road,' now Main South Road.

In 1841, Reynell began the planting of his vineyard with cuttings he had planted the year earlier at a temporary site on the banks of the Field River.

His first vineyard was called Stony Hill and he would have planted his vines as one year old rootlings. The next year he continued planting his farm establishing vineyards on his home farm which is now the winery site across the road.

By 1854 there was a demand for land for housing in the area and in February of that year, John Reynell drew up a Notice of Sale for a portion of his Reynella Farm for the establishment of the township of Reynella.

Reynell subdivided his farm and they named the town after his wine label.

By 1866 the town had a steam flour mill, hotel, post office, general store, school and chapel. However by the end of the Nineteenth Century as many farmers had moved to the Northern agricultural lands, Reynella was said to be "a village of the past, as several ruined houses along the road remain to testify.”

John Reynell died in 1873 and is buried at Christ Church, O’Halloran Hill. His sons, Walter and Carew Reynell, took over the wine production.

A pruning demonstration in Reynella in 1923 (c) SA Library.

In the 1950s and 60s the town of Reynella became engulfed in urban expansion and has become largely a residential area. In a twist of fate, the company former Reynell employee Thomas Hardy created, Thomas Hardy and Sons, ended up purchasing the Reynella Winery in 1982.

Stony Hill Vineyard pictured in 2009 before it was subdivided into housing.

Ironically, today there a much debate today about plans to subdivide Reynell's original Stony Hill Vineyard, together with Reynella home block they have lasted into the modern age. The buildings are heritage listed, but Stony Hill has become separated.

The value of buildings can be measured, however old farming land less so. What value does the efforts of the Reynell's have? What value is the site where Thomas Hardy sweated in the summer sun, while John Reynell taught him how to weed using a horse drawn plough? On pure economics very little.

As a vineyard those original vines Reynell planted have long since gone. The Stony Hill vineyard has replaceable stock, the oldest current vines date back to 1968. The vineyard no longer has significant value as a farm. Yet it remains as a link to a pioneer who we all owe so much. At the very least it is a living link to a man to took pride in his resourcefulness.

In today's wine world the name Reynella survives as the Chateau Reynella wine range and other similarly named products from Constellation Wines Australia.

More obtusely Geoff Merrill Wines also remembers those pioneering days as his Mt Hurtle Winery. Mt Hurtle was purchased by Mostyn Owen in 1897 and named after the original name for the wider Reynella area - Hurtle Vale. Geoff Merrill was the winemaker for Chateau Reynella during the 1980's and is a living link between the pioneering winemakers and the present age.

References:

Burden, Rosemary – Wines & Wineries of the Southern Vales (Adelaide 1976)

Reynell, Lenore & Margaret Hopton – John Reynell of Reynella: A South Australian Pioneer (Adelaide 1988)

Hardy, Sir James - Age Newspaper, Oct 23 (Melbourne 1984)

White, Philip - www.drankster.blogspot.com (2009)