Living With Global Winemakers
Written By: Michael Corbett on Thu, Mar 13th 2008
A 24 hour flight and twelve thousand miles later I have arrived in Langhorne Creek, South Australia and moved into my house here. As luck would have it, I am sharing a house with four other international wine travelers who have come to work the harvest as well. Living in one country farmhouse, we have an American, Italian, Frenchman, South African, and a Namibian, all of whom have backgrounds in enology and viticulture.
Our collective winemaking experiences ranges from making Cabernet blends in Napa Valley, the unique Barolo wine from Italy, the truly South African varietal Pinotage in Stellenbosch, and the historical Châteauneuf-du-Pape blends of France's Southern Rhone. Nights after work have been filled with international cuisine, and (sometimes heated) debates on winemaking styles and techniques. Despite all of our cultural and stylistic differences, we all agree that wine is a wonderful beverage.
With our unique backgrounds, we have all come to South Australia to learn how bulk Australian wines are made, and the harvest has begun this week! Things have yet to get into full swing, but we have processed some Orange Muscat and some Chardonnay grapes for a sparkling wine base. Since all of us have premium winemaking experience from around the globe, we are all used to small lots of hand-picked grapes coming in by tractor. Needless to say, we were all surprised to see the first 30-tonne truckload of grapes arrive at the crush pad.
The winery we all work for was designed for bulk wine production to supply Australian wine at the lower price points the international market has enjoyed for the last decade. To keep costs down, most of the grapes are machine harvested and processed in bulk. Two 25-tonne truckloads of grapes can be crushed and into a fermenter in about an hour. In addition to this large size, many of the hands-on winemaking procedures I performed in Napa are automated. However, though the size is much larger, the concepts of the winemaking process remain the same. Not a step of the winemaking procedure is done without the consultation of the winemaker's palate. The winery is very new, and gives us all an opportunity to gain experience in some new winemaking techniques to bring back to our own countries.
Harvest is set to go into full swing this upcoming week, and soon, time off from work and weekends will be very rare. Luckily, we were all able to enjoy a three-day weekend this past week for Australia Day (think July 4th-like BBQ's with Australian flags flying everywhere), which gave us a chance to hit up some of the beaches. So I have gotten the chance to take in some of the Australian sun before the long hours of harvest. Soon enough the winery will be working 24 hours a day, so tune in next week for my update of the madness of harvest.
