Australia, Day 20

This was the day to learn about wine:  vinyards, wine growing, wine making, and wine testing.

We went to three different vinyards in Hunter valley, with two giving us tours, and three giving us lots of wines to taste.

McWilliams' vinyard (http://www.mcwilliamswines.com.au/), with Maurice O'Shea, gave us a great tour of their facilities that focused on quality control, lots of stainless steel, automation, and chemistry and testing.

the lab

the stainless steel vats

Brokenwood (http://www.brokenwood.com.au/) gave us also some fun wines to taste.

Brokenwood wine selection

Tyrell's vinyard (http://www.tyrrells.com.au/)was our favorite.  This is one of the older vinyards in this region, and they make their wines still in very traditional ways.

original housing at Tyrell's

Here some fact(oid)s we learned:

• vines are cut into a T-ish shape with 8 nodes on either branch for best quality yield.  

  

  Tyrell's pruned vines

• roses are planted amidst vinyards because they are more susceptible to mold and fungi, so they are essentially the canary in the mold mine -- when they show spots, preventative treatment is necessary.
• these vinyards hand-pick their grapes
• harvest time is a 24/7, 2 shift undertaking, starting in January, potentially going through March.
• For the reds, the skins are left in the wine to give the wine color
• the white wine Semillon cannot be found in the US
• People study winemaking (with a lot of chemistry courses) at a university and then join a vinyard (if they are lucky).  Some vinyards also provide 6 months of on the job training, especially for international wine makers
• the oak vats and barrels are, in some cases, only used for 4 years and then reused for other purposes.  In other cases, especially the large ones are used much longer.  Not everyone uses oak barrels (many of which come from France).

  

  McWilliams' barrels

• In 2004, a ship load of contaminated cork essentially ruined that year's Australian wine -- since then, the industry has shifted completely to seals and screw tops.
• Bottleshock is when the wine gets moved from the barrels into bottles -- and if you then open the bottle too soon, the wine will still be a bit acidic because it was shocked in this move.
• and the making of a murder mystery:  one of the folks told us the story about one family wanting cuttings from another family.  They were denied, so, under the cover of darkness, they snuck over the fence and took some cuttings.  I am imagining that this should have led to at least one corpse in a barrel.

Wildlife of the day:  kangaroos and gang-gang cockatoos