The Second Glass

You haven’t fully appreciated wine until its 11:47 PM on Good Friday and you’re muttering four letter words you shouldn’t be saying on a holy day whilst picking stems out of a grape crusher with the Southern Cross shining above. That’s right folks, its harvest time – Australian style.

For those who have never considered it, the season difference between the northern and southern hemispheres makes for an earlier wine harvest that runs from January through April. Like myself, many wine geeks (or gluttons for punishment) flocked to the Southern Hemisphere fresh off of the ’07 wine harvest for sunny skies and the beginning of the ’08 harvest. Not confident enough to practice my Spanglish skills, I picked Australia over any South American destination, and have ended up in the Langhorne Creek, South Australia.

Langhorne Creek is located on the Fleurieu Peninsula, about an hour south east of Adelaide. Though it may not be one of the first Geographic Indications (Australian term similar to American Viticultural Area) associated with Australia, Langhorne Creek is actually the 3^rd largest grape growing area in South Australia and is 70% planted with Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz (however very sparsly “planted” with bars, with a whopping total of five). Historically it has been a grape growing region with few wineries, a location for South Australian wineries to grow a bulk of grapes for blending. However, recently more wineries have been built as of late with rising popularity of unique Shiraz and Cabernet blends.

Specifically I’ve been working at a custom crushing winery that deals mostly with bulk wine production. What does that mean? It means that in the last two months I’ve seen grapes processed to a scale that is #$%^ing huge, and have worked absolutely stupid hours to create the $10 - $15 price point wines that we have enjoyed in America for the last few years. In a word, this harvest has been going crazy. Our winery has been working 24/7 as machine harvested grapes have been coming in at a torrid pace for the last seven weeks. All the fruit ripened at the same time as South Australia suffered fourteen consecutive 95°F+ days, making grape processing a rushing effort. In fact even as I type this at 4AM the familiar sound of a passing grape truck is rambling through my house. When I worked in Napa, we did just over 900 tones during our harvest. Here in Langhorne Creek we are well over 14,000 tones, and still counting!

Thankfully, things have started to slow down a bit, and I will be able to start blogging about many of the interesting things I’ve seen and learned. Things ranging from wine conversations I’ve had with my international wine geek roommates, some comparative tasting I’ve done between conventionally oaked wines versus oak alternatives, and my impressions on screwcap wines, because let me tell you…they have a lot of them here.

Until next time, Cheers!