Almost half a year has passed since the end of vintage and we’ve been kept busy building the cellar door, showing new release wines, hosting wine dinners, the odd export mission and looking at fruit intake for vintage 2015. Whilst it is always fun doing the many and varied things in our little wine business, the most fun is always in the winery either during vintage when those precious little bunches arrive ready to start their new life as wine or now during malo season. At this time of the year we get our first look at the new vintage wines and get a really good indication of their potential as either age worthy wines like Bruce, Harold or Don or fresh early release wines like Mates or our new November release 2015 Izway Mataro.
After vintage is done and dusted and the wines are barreled down they spend the next few months going through Malolactic Fermentation, the abridged version of this complex process is that the harsher Malic Acid (unripe green apple) is turned into the softer, more palatable Lactic Acid (milk). Quite simply, it softens the wine.
Once the Malo’s have finished we rack and splash all our wines from barrel to tank before putting them back into barrels for more ageing or leaving in a tank for bottling. This is the first exciting moment to see if we have turned those lovely little grapes into wines that we can be proud of.
The smells of new wine splashing around is absolutely awesome and it is no wonder people the world over fall in love with wine even more once they have smelt a vintage underway or seen and smelt a cellar in the throws of Malo season. I certainly did and continue to do so every year, this is by far the best job in the world!
Brian Conway