The quick presentation by Steve Chapman, the oak solutions specialist at World Cooperage on the role of oak was followed by a quicker one by Mark Roberts on oak alternatives. The impression I got was that Mark was the busier of the two with heaps of innovations in his field. It seemed that chips and staves along with micro oxygenation could do better, faster and cheaper what a barrel could. But then a good wine was never about better, faster or cheaper. Roll out the barrel!!
Most of barrel making is being done the same way they did it for centuries, except this part. Laser embossing is a convenient way to print on the barrel head just about anything you can whip up on Microsoft Word. Watching this baby in action was in great contrast to all of the other archaic processes we saw earlier on. But dated as it may seem, it's in these traditional ways where the charm of wine making lay.
The two hour drive from Nuriootpa to Renmark seemed longer. The countryside underwent a steady transformation from lush vineyards between rolling hills to drab and seemingly endless bush plains. As I approached the Riverland, the scenery began changing again to vineyards, much bushier, taller, closely planted. These looked liked wild country cousins of the Barossa vines. And the same goes with fruit they produce, so the story goes. I'm not being harsh here. The Riverland has never made any pretenses of quality and plays its role as a bulk, cheap, bag in box kind of wine producer without apology. And not coincidentally it's the largest wine producing region in Australia.
Quite understandably, the seminar was dominated by the single largest problem faced by the industry in recent memory. The drought. As an opening mood setter, Lawrie Stanford of the Australian Wine and Brandy
Corporation made a point with the help of the flying geese analogy. Geese fly in formation pooling in resources, encouraging and helping each other in tough times, taking turns to do difficult tasks and staying focussed. The call to be a goose rang clear. He then took us through some insightful data. If we have a small vintage next year, our stocks will all but be depleted he reckons. But that's not all bad. Apart from pushing up the price of grapes, it would lead to an import of cheap wine from Chile and Argentina. Imports. Now how is that a good thing? It would free up Australian wine for products up the value ladder. So net net we would have larger exports in value terms.
Next up was Robert Hill Smith, proprietor of the oldest, largest and most respected family winery in Australia. Yalumba has somehow managed to be big and small all at once. It's a fairly large winery, selling 2 million cases, but on the other hand retains the image of its wines made not by a company but by an individual. And that individual is Robert. The presentation titled "Charting a course" began with a brief on the current picture. The year 2007 has been both more and less, he said - the drought, less production and less retail shelf space, but more demand for grapes perhaps and a higher price per tonne. There has been an air of mediocrity - We are not telling the story of our regions, and the perception of "Australian sunshine in a bottle" has not been challenged. The vision laid by the government to increase volumes has ignored value. Apart from climbing up the value ladder, we need to explore new varieties - Vermentino, Tempranillo, and Albarino could be the next big things. Other things to look into would be organic wines, how to sell to Generation Next and focusing on emerging markets (read India and China). He ended his presentation with a statement, "What we must decide is - how we are valuable, not how valuable we are".
Robert was followed by Ian Kowalick, South Australia's Independent Commissioner of the Murray Darling Basin Commission. Considering the current water crisis, everyone was all ears. The news was mostly bad, with lower rainfall and higher temperatures leading to high evaporation rates.
A couple of technical speakers followed - one on Canopy management in hot days and another giving growers an insiders view of what happens in the winery. The industry's spirit of unity and cooperation in hard times was beautifully demonstrated when Andrew Weeks, manager of Jubilee Park Vineyards shared in detail the water use strategies they had been using. To tackle the challenge of evolving the consumer upward, Paul Henry of the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation spoke about their four pronged strategy to market Australian wine. The conference ended with an open discussion on the water crisis.
The Riverland region has been getting 16% of their normal allocation. Some are using bores while others have begun buying water rights. Still some others are using up their existing supplies and hoping that it rains, in denial that permanent damage may be done to their vines if nothing is done about it. Soon. Inspite of this, one of the panelists advised a grower not to make too big a noise as the international media would pick it up and would damage sales. When a grower queried how come the wineries could not increase prices at this critical time when the cost of grapes were a measly 37 cents for a 10 dollar bottle, he got a wishy washy answer. How this pathetic situation has arisen is another matter, but two things are apparent to me. The first, corporatisation of the industry is driving the farmers into the ground. Share price matters more than keeping growers alive. And second, the government is trying to make farmers believe that the solution to the problem is to create a market for water and let the highest bidder win. The rock and the hard place.
The Riverland wine seminar ended for me in the form of a chance meeting at the tea and coffee table with a man who seemed as peeved as I was with the way the growers were being short changed. This common feeling led us to exchanging stories and finally an invitation to his vineyard, not far away. As it turned out, Howard Hollow was not just a vigneron with 10 acres of shiraz and cabernet, his main job being a scientist with the Primary Industries Department of South Australia. Being in charge of disposal and reuse of waste water from wineries and other industries, he had a keen understanding of the water problems the Riverland was going through.
As we arrived at the vineyard, Howard hurried and turned the drippers on, one of the jobs he had to do on his weekly trip to the vineyard. His wife and he would visit regularly on weekends till a hurricane early this year ravaged the vineyard and the cottage on it. The damage too much to bear, Mrs. Hollow now avoids the vineyard and stays home in the Adelaide Hills.
Being unhappy with the way wines were over-filtered in the Riverland, Howard decided to make his own wine with a part of his crop. His wine went through just one filteration at the end, producing a full bodied drop. Quite pleased with the results he plans to vinify his entire crop next vintage and hopes to export his boutique label. At this point my taste buds were sufficiently enticed and I was keen on giving it go, but sadly he did not have any with him. He promised he'd get me a bottle the next time he'd come to the Barossa. I nodded gladly.
Howard was yet another example of grape growers wanting to take their fruit to its vinous conclusion instead of leaving it to the large wineries to do their commercial thing. Whether the corporatisation of wine in Australia has done more harm than good is an open question, but the reverse trend is certainly the way I would like to see things happen. Wine is a very individual thing and nothing can be better than wine made by individuals for individuals.
Very aussie. The barbie part at least. But you'd be surprised how many people go to church here. I've been going to a Lutheran church called St. Petri, the largest parish in the valley and also to a Baptish church lead by a delightful man and good friend Richard (Will have to do a separate post on him). But there was something different about the one we attended this morning. Hayley had been pestering me for a while now that we should go to her church and I'm quite glad I relented. Called the Bethany Lutheran church (I think), it's a beautiful little small building even more beautiful on the inside, and I don't just mean the interiors.
Starting the service with funny jokes (coz jokes are not always funny) and wittisms, this man really knew how to work up the 40 strong congregation. As the service progressed, it became apparent to me that the pastor knew everyone on a first name basis. Soon he was wanting to know mine. I had to holler out my alien Indian sounding name a fair few times before he could pretend that he got it (a common problem I face in these parts). After welcoming the visitors (read : me) he went on to wish people their birthdays, anniversaries, and other pertinent events. The older the bloke was, the louder the claps.
I don't know if you can call this a church as much as you could call it an extended family meeting up on a Sunday morning for some bread and grog (which incidentally I quite enjoyed : the miniature loaf of bread and a glug of barossa fortified). We had to leave quickly to go to Stu's barbie, but as we did, I couldn't help but feel some happiness.
Stu had a tray of meat the size of Western Australia on the barbie for us. Any concerns of leftover food were shrugged aside by Tom, our housemate. Sharing house with Tom for the last two months taught me to take his comments about food seriously. Not just because he's a chef but because he's a mean lean eater. We started working on the bottle of chardy we took along, wishing it was a rose. Over snags, stakes and more snags we learnt more about Stu's life as a funeral director, his work as a Chubb fire contractor and his public speaking group. Called the toastmaster's, they meet once a fortnight in a group of 15-20 and deliver speeches. Once you deliver 10 sppeches from a designated book you graduate to the next level and so on. I guess the skills they learn, and just the practice of public speaking would give one some value in life. It's something on my radar, if I can make time for it, next year.
We had a latecomer. Josh works in a vineyard at Angaston. It's always nice to meet someone from the industry and
talk about the crop, spraying programs, frost, how bad last year was, and how if it doesn't rain we'll be driving trucks in Western Australia. It was Bathurst day, so we watched a bit on telly. Apparently it's a 167 lap race lasting for 6 hours, with two drivers alternating in the same car. These are Ford and Holden V8's.. every boy's dream. By the way, either you are a Ford man or a Holden man. You may stop voting for the liberals and move to labour, but you will never switch your car brand loyalty.
We had to move on so we said our bbye's and well, moved on.
It's not hard to come by signs of existence of brass bands in the Barossa. You see mentions of them in the local papers, or someone saying that her uncle or aunty or something played in a band. I've even seen a signpost saying "Band Practice on Thursdays. All welcome". So my curiousity was sufficiently tickled when I heard about the Festival and told Hayley that we must make it a point to go. Clashing plans to have her mother over for dinner were deftly altered and we decided to cook a curry and cart it to mum's at Tanunda, the location for the Festival and main tourist town in the Barossa.
The main street was closed for the day. People gathered on either side, young and old (mainly old), and cheered as the twenty odd bands marched by, one by one. Bands from all over South Australia and even Brisbane had made it here. I couldn't understand the constant commentary on the loudspeaker but it somehow mixed well with the wonderful sounds of mirror shiny brassoed instruments waxing to a crescendo as they neared and waning until the next one came along. There was something eerie about the bagpipers though. Can't put my finger on it.
A group of children provided comic relief by animatedly marching behind every band that passed by. A couple of long haired teenagers followed one band with electric guitar in hand.
Towards the end came the Tanunda town band, proudly marching in drop dead black outfits with gold trimming. They turned 150 this year, apparently, though some of them didn't look it, I joked to Hayley. The prize distribution that followed reminded me so much of our Zonal parish contest back in Bombay, with shields displayed like family silver. Deservedly the Tanunda Band won the overall competition in the end. They celebrated by playing outside the Tanunda Hotel pub, exactly the way they did 150 years ago.
There's something about marching bands playing and marching. They manage to be boring and endearing all at once. They don't play my kind of music, (apart from one that played the beatles kicker "Got to get u into my life". They
did a hair raising intro note for note. Sweet as.) and ompah doesn't get my feet tapping. But maybe it's not about the music. Maybe it's about getting together on thursday evenings for band practice. Or perhaps about hanging on to tradition with a suffocating embrace, about keeping the things you love alive. Or maybe just getting together for a street party, like the one that followed, or just the thrill of having the main street closed off. I don't know. Hmm... I'll be back next year.
It was a clear Friday night as we were driving down the Paddock in the back of a ute (oz lingo for Utility vehicle). The air was nippy as the ute bumped up and down, doing a drum roll every time we went over a cow trap. But it wasn't going to be chilly for long, Richard assured us. The bonfire he guaranteed would make it feel like a hot summer night. Richard and I have been good friends ever since I moved to the Barossa, but I still can't tell whether he's serious or joking. So I had to wait and see.
The men got the fire going straight away as Nola, Richard's wife and Pam, Malcolm's better half got the chairs and the food and tea laid out. In no time we had a raging fire metres into space. It was getting quite hot now, and we had to progressively move our chairs away, till we were about 30 feet away. At this time, I was having quite a ball, javelinning logs into the inferno, which by now was as loud as a U2 concert. We soon settled down into our chairs and while Hayley was keeping Christopher, Richard's wide eyed 12 year old busy, I was having a chat to Pam about each others' families. It was nice to get to know them. One of Malcolm's sons runs the Holden dealership in the Barossa while another one handles the farm. I got talking to Malcolm too, who turned out to be a devout bible quoting christian with quite a fresh take on things.
The embers were almost all that were left by now, perhaps signaling that it was time to go. As we climbed into the back of the ute, both Hayley and I couldn't help but feel quite happy to have spent time with some nice people and get a slice of country life.
Today's visit to the bottling plant of Wolf Blass, one of Australia'a largest wineries, was awe inspiring, to say in the least. The winery is part of the Foster's Group, owner of brands like Penfolds, Rosemount, and a host of beer brands.
We were led by the very charming Trish Colby our professor and consultant winemaker to some of the premium wineries in the Barossa. She's a part of the small but fast-growing class of women winemakers in what are traditionally male infested cellars. A class with Trish is always a pleasure. While bringing it alive with a wealth of experience at Penfolds and other wineries, she is a fountain of knowledge on all things red, white and in between.
Being a part of the Quality control class, we focussed on the quality controls at each stage of the process. The amazing part of this bottling line was that it was COMPLETELY AUTOMATIC.
The empty bottles are picked up from the pallets, are filled in a controlled atmosphere, closed and then cartons are assembled and filled and finally pallets of filled cartons are stacked and shrink wrapped all by machine.
The most impressive part though of this set-up is its "Swisslog" system of warehousing. 400,000 cases of wine (which roll over every week) are palletised and stored in racks six pallets high. Movements in and out are completely automated with the help of 4 cranes running through the racks. An order is simply keyed into the computer and in minutes, the pallets are drawn from the racks and conveyed to the factory door, ready for loading into a truck. No forklifts, no people involved. Awesome!
On our way out we were out-paced by cartons making their way into pallets. Machines and factories have always facinated me, but the thing about this one was there were so few people around, it seemed like lunch time all the time! Anyway, till next time, cheers!
Saturday the 15th, Nuriootpa - This morning when i woke up i wasn't very keen on making it to the wine tasting. Sure there would be heaps of people to meet and litres of luscious liquid for the asking, but the pressure of not being up to date with my studies was making me think of cozying up at home with my books. I guess the hour long bath I took changed my mind, and i trooped along to Angaston, the historic town in the Barossa.
The event was held at the Angaston town hall, a beautiful period building with an impressive Gothic
facade. Called the Artisans of the Barossa, these were a group of winemakers who made small hand-crafted parcels of wine. None of them have cellar doors and sell by mail order mainly. I got a free Reidel large bowl glass on entering and then went about tasting the 40 odd wines on display. Few of them were quaffers but most of them were well crafted drops. I particularly enjoyed Dan Standish's old block shiraz, made from some 100 year old vines, I reckon.
I went to practically all the tables and discussed the idea of exporting to India. One of them, Tony from Kalleske said he got an email from an Indian guy who offered to sell his wines in exchange for grape growing and winemaking technology. Interesting.
Thankfully i finished most of my business before my friends Jackie and Csilla arrived, so I could switch to fun mode and we take each others pants off, figuratively, of course.
We must go.. it's the biggest thing in the Barossa, man - Jacky shouted over the phone. So we made a plan. And to make things even better, Csilla decided to throw a party at her place on Saturday night.
The weekend was packed with events at most of the wineries. Some had exclusive 100 dollar upward gourmet dinners while other had a la carte. Saturday afternoon at Villa Tinto was going to be a choice way to begin the revelry, we reckoned. And since it was a long time since I met my friend Albert D' Palma, I couldn't disagree. It was at Villa Tinto where I rocked up and had my first go at pruning vines. Albert wouldn't pay me but would give me a bottle of 2004 oaked Chardy at the end of the day for my efforts. And yes, he warned me, do anything but don't cut your fingers. Joke? No. He'd seen it happen too often to be funny.
The light chicken schnitzel salad was followed by a flamenco dance performance. In the Barossa? Now Albert is Argentinian, probably the only one in German dominated Barossa, and that explains the strong latin feel of Villa Tinto. By the way the name Barossa comes from the Spanish region of Barrosa. Why it was misspelt is anyone's guess, but apparently some guy, I
Moving on... it's too late now man... gotta sleep zzzzzzzzzzz
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Abhi said:
live bands, open air parties, clear autumn days - never fails to cheer up the human heartAutumn Snow - you... read more
on Barossa Band Festival -
Autumn Snow said:
Looks like fun :-) I remember having something similar close to my hometown in NY - gets to be fun... read more
on Barossa Band Festival
congrats on TIG :) read more
on Barossa Band Festival