Greetings from Shiraz Country...

Greetings from Shiraz country - The weather this week has been uncharacteristically cool and wet, meaning that the grapes have been unable to produce the level of sugar required for decent wine to be made - so another week has passed in South Australia and still we have no fruit to make into wine. Friday was the worst day, raining from dawn to sunset – that said I suppose we in Clare should count ourselves lucky as just a few miles further south in the Barossa there have been flash floods which we have been fortunate enough to avoid. 

View over Leasingham from the Riesling Trail

The lack of grapes has meant that us ‘cellar rats’ at Kilikanoon have been put to task this week with countless jobs mostly involving pressure washers and sweeping up. Anyone who thinks that working at a winery is an endless cycle of strolling through vineyards, tasting wine and getting a suntan, think again! There are hundreds of barrels to be washed, huge stainless steel tanks and fermenters to be chemically cleaned, floors to be scrubbed and other duties too numerous to mention – personal lowlights from the past few days would be the cleaning out of a shed and washing the winery truck. On the other hand, the weather since the weekend has got a lot better. As I write I’m sitting on the vintage house terrace looking out at a perfect Azure sky with not a cloud in sight. Here’s hoping we should have fruit to process by the end of the week…

We have had a few tonnes of grapes so far from Baroota, another South Australian town close to the ocean, a few miles northwest of Clare – so there has been some wine related work to do – the first half of this week has been mostly going through the process of ‘racking’, whereby wine is released from its fermentation tank and pumped back over the top, thereby submerging the ‘cap’, or layer of skins, stems and pips that give red wines their tannin and colour. The one thing to remember if you ever find yourself performing this task is this; always, always always check that all your valves are in their correct position before releasing the wine. I learnt this lesson the hard way this afternoon and my t-shirt, shorts, boxers, socks and skin are all now a dull purple colour which is proving very difficult to get rid of.

Ripening Shiraz grapes. Rare.

In other news, all the Kilikanoon cellar rats have entered into a vintage beard wager. One simple rules no shaving whatsoever until the last wine has been made. Now, I entered into this bet last Thursday evening at a barbecue at the Sevenhills pub just up the road from Clare. We had all been invited there to meet the other wineries, get to know each other better and indulge in general merriment. The wineries all brought several bottles of their own wines and needless to say we all tried several glasses, after which I found myself tied into a bet that I could never win for the following reasons. Firstly, facial hair irritates me – I can stand it for a couple of weeks before I snap and hack it all off. Secondly, every girl I have ever known has said I look better without it (not that there are many girls to impress around here…). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I have all the facial hair growing ability of a 12 year old boy. I suspect I’ll be buying the winner his case of beer. Hmmm…

Running continues to be a source of relaxation and pleasure – the Riesling Trail which runs parallel to the Main North Road really is the most perfect running track you could imagine – the best time for it would be early morning but I’m usually at the winery by 7, so the next best option is early evening, around 6pm when the sun is just thinking about heading back round to England for the night. It really is an awesome place to run – perfectly flat, with green hills all around, lemon myrtle and olive trees lining the path and Shiraz and Riesling stretching in perfect formation as far as the eye can see. Now and again a cyclist glides past, or a tractor rumbles by in the adjacent vineyards, but apart from that I have the whole place to myself. Almost. You see it seems that the local snake population, energised by a day in the South Australian sunshine, is out and about during the early evening – a fact I had completely overlooked until yesterday, when, pounding along admiring said scenery, I came within an Asics width of a Brown Snake. Now fair play, it just kept going and was gone before I’d even had chance to get out of the way so may I take this opportunity to thank the snakes of the world for being more scared of me than I am of them. Sincerely.