One day we will make wine from grapes grown on the property but until then we’ll keep congregating in Orazio’s garage like some arcane alchemical society….This year we bought Mataro (Mourvedre) grapes from Flemington Markets. It will make a light and fruity red (think Beaujolais nouveau…) that is as good to drink as it is for cooking and with our allocation of 55 litres there will be enough for both.
Making wine is easy. Making a good wine is harder. In April we simply crushed and destalked the grapes into large plastic barrels, covered with flyscreen and left for five days to ‘boil’ (ferment) as the grape yeast gets started on the sugar. Then we put everything through the grape press (ours also does apples, pears and, one day, olives) and then poured into scrupulously clean plastic barrels, the ones used for table olive importation. They are covered to keep out fruit fly and a month later the wine is transferred into glass demijohns. We will decant into bottles in mid July and seal to prevent oxidation. Should have about 78 bottles so enough to use as gifts to a few people, particularly those that have been saving all their empty screw top wine bottles.
What we have tasted of the ’09 vintage is very good and has berry flavours while the ’08 vintage was fuller and definitely had cherry and liquorice, like a very young Cahors wine from France. The ’08 Grappa was superb but none from this year as a little goes a long way!
More than anything it is just fun to do something that has been done every year for fifty years and we will continue the tradition.
Cheers!!
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