At the end of the tunnel. It’s always the darkest before dawn. June is the month of darkness. Of stillness, and reflection. The wines are safely away in barrel or fermenting quietly. The vineyard is still, burrowing into its winter hibernation, pruning happening at a leisurely rather than frantic pace. For a short period of […]
Pinot Noir is one of the most elusive, fickle mistresses in our industry. Lynnette Hudson, (aka ‘The Groove’) attempts to shed some light on this winemaking process, through the diary entries she’s been keeping over the last six weeks. March 28th: Gorgeous morning, perfect for the first day of picking. The Pinot Noir grapes taste […]
Wine critic Alice Feiring recently said; “The benchmark for me is that if you’re growing great tomatoes, you’re making great wine. The two seem to go together”. I would like to think she wasn’t simply making a statement about regionality and degree days. I would like to think she was also talking about an affinity […]
Last Sunday afternoon was a peaceful one; spent at a friend’s place in Gore Bay, oblivious to the weather warnings about a ‘super cell’ or super storm brewing to the south of us. That evening as we travelled back into the Valley from the north an enormous cloud was tracking towards us from the south. […]
Summer of Riesling is at full noise. Every year I swear I’m never doing it again, but I keep getting pulled back by the seductive siren calls of some seriously good New Zealand Riesling. Riesling producers are like Pinot Noir people. They’re not normal. They’re edgy and interesting and just freaking get it. They don’t […]
It’s hard to remember sometimes that December is only the first month of Summer. The growing season has taken her sweet damn time to get to this point, and our expectations of settled weather are always higher than the reality. Mother Nature has no regard for our imported northern hemisphere traditions, and it’s almost part […]
This month on The Food Farm is more of a hurtle towards summer than a gentle meander through spring. November seems awfully close to the end of the year, and that crazy deadline that is Christmas. Locally we use Show Weekend (2nd weekend of November) as the supposed ‘end of the frost season’ measuring stick, […]
Last week I went to a fascinating evening created by wine writer Jo Burzynska. It was about wine and the effect sound has on what we taste. I have to admit to being a cynic at the beginning of the evening, but the same wines really did taste different depending on the type of music […]
I’m surrounded by constant reminders this week about how fragile life is. It’s clung to rather than embraced. There is no ‘summertime, and the living is easy’ happening here yet . As another southerly front approaches you can almost hear us collectively draw breath and hold it. As it passes we exhale again. I’m looking […]
One of a good winemaker’s most impressive skills is to look at the components of a wine and work out which barrels will come together in the bottle for great future drinking. There’s always a little leap of faith, a letting go of the science and believing in the magic for a moment. Growing food […]
