News from the Fernfield Wines Estate

Vintage Preparation

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 07:45:11 GMT

What we get up to while waiting for the grapes to ripen...

Spring Vineyard Management

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 23:27:51 GMT

Spring is a hugely important time for optimising wine quality - even though the wine isn't even in berry-form yet!

The season so far has been a mixed-bag. Like most of Australia, Eden Valley is very dry, and late frosts were threatening, but the canopies are looking good and the bunches are promising.

Maybe it's just because we're a family of farming nerds, but we find the complexities in vineyard management fascinating - there's so much to think about to maximise grape quality and yield.

For those into the science of wine, here's a few vineyard topics on our minds this time of year:

Canopy Management

Managing vine canopy is a precarious balance between a range of factors - the right sunlight for grape quality, ripening rate, sunburn risk and disease are all quite important, and there's also water efficiency, ease of managing bird nets, and how pretty the vines look, to consider.

This year we are doing less manipulation than usual. We often remove excess shoots and pluck lots of leaves, but this year is dry and summer is forecast to be hot, so we're leaving a little more canopy for shade than usual, and will control any excess vigour through managing soil moisture.

"Our Shiraz uses a 'lazy ballerina' system"

Our Shiraz uses a 'lazy ballerina' system, where we use a series of wires to hold up the shoots, with the eastern side vertical but the western side angled out for more afternoon shade (hence the name, imagine a ballerina with one arm up and one lazy arm). Lazy Ballerina is great for airflow, balanced sun exposure and also looks quite nice! Some years we still need to pluck leaves in the Shiraz, but this year we think it looks perfect as is.

Soil Moisture

We've teched-up our operation this year, investing in bluetooth soil moisture monitoring. In years of drought like this, grape quality factors will suffer without watering in our vineyard, but it's a delicate balance, so soil moisture probes are a great way to accurately monitor what is happening under the soil (and give us pretty graphs to go 'ooh' at).

To grow the best quality grapes with reasonable yields, the vines need different soil moisture targets at different times. Before and during flowering (late spring), a nice moist soil is key in developing healthy bunches with good fruit set (lots of berries), and a solid canopy to provide the right shade and photosynthesis for ripening later in the season.

'A little stress can get quality results'

Once the berries have set, however, a little stress can get quality results in red varieties (known as deficit irrigation). Keeping the vines a little stressed results in multiple changes, with smaller berries one factor in a high skin to pulp ratio, the skin having a lot of the desirable wine characters we're looking for so the more the better. Deficit irrigation is also a good tool for making sure the vine doesn't concentrate on canopy growth, which wastes energy and water and can delay ripening.

Later again, after the berries change colour (known as veraison, which happens late Jan), studies have found no benefit from deficit irrigation, and there is a significant risk of yield loss in hot weather, so we prefer to reduce the stress on the vines during this phase, with minimal watering, only where required to sneak the soil moisture into a lower stress range. With our shiny new graphs, we can be much more precise in our irrigation scheduling - and save water, while maximising quality.

There's plenty of research by AWRI we love to get amongst and are happy to send links if you're interested in the detail.

The Two-Year Vine Cycle

A tricky detail about growing grapes is that unlike annual crops, vines have a 'memory' of the past conditions that lasts over multiple years. This means V'20 buds were developed last season, complete with a maximum number of bunches and berries already 'coded in'.

'Vines have a memory of the past'

This matters because it means that this year's 'best case' yield was already defined last season, in what was a really low yielding season. So even if everything went perfectly this season, we'd be starting off with a factor that needs to be accounted for in managing V'20. This also means that growers who have lost their crop this year due to frost will lose yield next year, but from a more positive perspective it means everything we do to look after the vines each season also benefits the next season.

This might be a little bit of detail for the punters at home, but fun to share.

Our 2019 Whites' Little Journey

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:35:46 GMT

Here's a bit of a story (with pictures!) of the journey of our 2019 whites

And the final products?

2019 'Hidden Valley' Riesling: The dry vintage conditions resulted in high natural acidity and a citrus zest typical of the region. Grapefruit and granny smith apple can also be found in abundance, creating a Riesling with length and complexity.
2019 'Our Little Secret' Sauvignon Blanc is fresh and vibrant with big tropical fruit character, we’ve come to love drinking this wine in the warm days we've been getting recently.

New Eden Valley reds are here!

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 04:16:15 GMT

Green returns to Eden Valley and we have some new wines!

After a big wait as we let these mature both on oak and in bottle we are finally ready and proud to be able to share out 2015 Old River Red Cabernet and Merlot.

Both wines are rich and fruity, owing a lot to the favourable weather our vines were blessed with in Eden Valley. A dry season, vintage 2015 featured a mild summer with one well-timed major rain event at veraison to refill the soil profile without diluting the fruit.

The Cabernet delivers subtle vanillas and cassis, maintaining some ﬂoral aromas and eucalypt inﬂuences. A generous 36 months of French oak has given plenty of time for this full bodied wine to soften and develop complexity.

The Merlot is intensely aromatic, with plenty of plum and berry with some spice and hints of coffee and chocolate. The mouthfeel is round and smooth with great length of palate, again showing plum, chocolate and coffee.

Both wines, as all of our wines are, were made by hand with care, from hand-plunging to basket pressing, and were made from start to finish here by the two of us (along with a few helpers on picking day).

Vintage all happened quick for us this year, from our Sauvvy Blanc to our Cabernet Sauvignon all coming off the vine in less than a month, which is a little bit unheard of in Eden Valley. Yields were very low in the reds, creating small and concentrated clusters while the whites are displaying excellent natural acidity and amazing citrus fruit characters. We are now seeing some of the darkest and richest wines we have had the pleasure of experiencing, with a heads up now that now that this vintages reds are going to be sparse, but if we can do them justice, magnificent!

Our whites and Rose are just about ready for bottling, so for those of you patiently hanging out for our Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc you should be able to try them at the cellar door from next month. Hopefully it is not just Helen (Scott's mum) who is excited by this ;)

Along with vintage and winemaking, we've been kept busy by feeding our sheep and alpacas while we waited for the recent rain! Our latest cria (baby alpaca) was born on Bec's birthday in April and is growing well. Check out the photo below.

We've also had a few events including a beautiful autumn wedding which was amazing and was a pleasure to be a part of. A potentially problematic event which didn't seem to faze the crowd was the unashamedly crashing by Alan the alpaca who jumped the fence and got in the amongst the 'first kiss' photos for a bit of bonus entertainment.

Below are a few photos from the last couple of months, including a happy snap of Bec and Xavy with after some great news of winning

"The Best Small Cellar Door In Eden Valley"

from Gourmet Wine Traveller, our old olive tree producing plenty of fruit this season, the cabernet filter cake from our last basket press for vintage, and a cheeky shot of our Border Collie, Bandit, because we can't help it.

Our New Eden Valley Wayward girl

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 03:23:22 GMT

Our little cottage has had an interesting history and for each release of our"Wayward Girl" label we ask a different artist to celebrate this history through their own rendition of this time and place.

In recognition of one hundred and sixty two years after our quaint little cellar door cottage, Rushlea Homestead, was built, we asked our friend and artist Amy Herman to design a label that portrays 'The Wayward Girls' of Rushlea Homestead. These girls were sent away from friends and family during their pregnancies, with the hooded girl in the artwork a portrayal of their concealment during this time.

Reminiscent of our last vintage, the wine is a careful blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot & Cabernet Franc from our Eden Valley Estate (pictured above). The grapes were hand-picked into small open fermenters, hand-plunged and basket pressed before being aged in French Oak Barrels to bring you a smooth and luscious arvo wine.

Vintage update; The extreme heat in January threw everyone a few challenges this season, though with our hottest temp 'only' getting to 43, there was plenty we could do to maintain a healthy vineyard. A few tricks include using asymmetrical canopy management to expose the berries to morning sun (known as "Lazy Ballerina") while protecting them from the harsh afternoon heat.

Straw undervine has also been handy to reduce the soil temperatures and hold in moisture, and although we haven't seen any sun or heat damage, the yields are going to be pretty low this year after poor weather earlier in the season resulted in low berry numbers and fruit set.

Nets are up and veraison has hit, marking the start of the (anxious) wait for ripening. We're expecting a late vintage this year - veraison was about 2 weeks late - which means we can sit back and relax a little longer before the rush of vintage!

A special project this year is a collaboration with the Eden Valley Hotel on a Federweisser, a semi-fermented sweet Riesling which we will release at a function at the Hotel in March - the wine is picked, bottled and drank all on one week so it's something pretty different!

Gold Leaf Reserve

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 13:30:00 GMT

We are excited to (finally) release our next Gold Leaf Reserve wines! The Gold Leaf is reserved for our absolute favourite barrels of wine, most being single barrel wines of only around 350 bottles.

We've anxiously been watching these from little berries to the bottle for over 4 years now, hoping to show off some examples of what Eden Valley really can do. For those visitors that have discussed these wines with us, you would know we've been excited about these for a long time and can't wait to share these with you. These are a little bit fancy, with all ticks that make an icon wine without the price tag.

The 2014 Eden Valley Cabernet had extended french oak ageing for almost four years, followed by six-months bottle ageing, to develop and soften the palate so it is perfect to drink now or put down.

The 2015 Eden Valley Merlot is delectable and rich, it was barrel aged for 30 months in french oak, then bottle aged for six months and is a cherry delight.

These two wines join our 2013 Gold Leaf Reserve Shiraz Viognier, which James Halliday gave 93 points and said

"The amount of work behind this wine is obvious, the mouthfeel very good, the flavours likewise."

James Halliday

The Cabernet and Merlot are brand new so we don't have any reviews yet but we're excited to see the results. Our friends and visitors to the cellar door in the past few weeks have been saying great things - I don't want to brag but recently visitors have been throwing around words like 'exceptional' and 'amazing' (okay that's possibly a brag, sorry, I'm just excited!).

A defining feature of our Gold Leaf Reserve wines is there isn't much of them, so don't miss out! Our Gold Leaf Members have already had their early release so there's now less than 300 bottles left, and you'll likely never see these wines on a retail shelf.

News from around the estate

We've just released our first Rosé, a 2018 Cabernet Franc Rosé that will almost certainly sell out before the end of summer. We made so few bottles that we've limited the wine to Cellar Door only, so the only way to drink it is by visiting and relaxing on the cottage front porch.

And speaking of wines selling out, a couple of fan-favourites have been popular recently and are off the shelf at the moment - we're out of Riesling, the Wayward Girl and Sauvignon Blanc. The way we run our winery means we don't guarantee we'll always have the same range, as we make wines to suit the seasons conditions, so it can be a good idea to grab a few extra of what you like! We do know we're bottling the next Wayward Girl soon, along with our new and little bit different, Vitality coffee & wine blend.

Other things that have been keeping us busy include making some fun custom order 187mL wines, our latest beer (a tropical pale ale in honour of the warmer summer weather!), wine blending and bottling, and developing our next chocolate recipes.

A few photos:

Bandit being a good wine dog at the cellar door.
Scott's been helping out installing some new sculptures in the main street which celebrate the history of Eden Valley. Make sure to check them out next time you visit!
Xavier having a heart-to-heart with one of our three month old lambs.
Bec and Xavier checking on the sheep.

A Basic Guide to Practical Wine Cellaring

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 14:30:00 GMT

Do you have your wine on a display rack in your lounge room?

If so, consider this a digital slap on your knuckles for the damage being done to your lovely wine collection. So why do you store it there… It looks nice and I understand we can't all add a basement wine cellar (the practicality of digging hole under the middle of your house quickly becomes a problem), but there are other options…

Firstly why are wine storage conditions so important? The first reason is that with time, under the right conditions, the components of the wine will work together to create balance between fruit, acid and tannins to soften and mature to a taste which many prefer. The second reason is to prevent our wine turning to the dreaded 'vinegar', the process where volatile compounds multiply and overpower the taste and smell of the wine.

What we try to achieve when storing our wine is to prevent exposure to sunlight (UV), avoid quick changes in temperature, as well as keeping the maximum temperature down. These conditions all favour the development of our wine spoilage mechanisms (Bec loves talking the chemistry, but I'll leave out the details for now). Our ideal temperature for slow ageing is 10-15 degrees C, keeping below a maximum of 25 degrees C. For those questioning 'What about humidity?' this is not as critical to our wine as the aforementioned factors and has thankfully become even less of a factor with the introduction of screwcap.

I hope you're convinced action is needed, SO WHAT DO YOU DO??

I named this 'practical' storage so I'll start at reducing the damage (not preventing it!) and I've mentioned our critical factors are sunlight, temperature variation and maximum temperature. So, if you like your wine on display in your living area, look to reduce damage by getting out of the line of sunlight, avoid places next to heating and cooling such as under ducts. Pretty simple hey?!

So we now want to get a little more serious, but what if you've got no spare cash (as you've spent it all on wine). Let's get it out of our living area that is exposed to sunlight and regular changes in temperature and find a better room. You're looking for the coolest room in the house, and as a typical Aussie house may not have a basement, look preferably for a south east facing room that avoid the heat of the evening sun. Now we want to black out the sun with decent curtains (or a black sheet) and we have an improvement. You could now consider getting the wines inside some additional insulation such as a cupboard with some covering blankets.

Your wines are now starting to feel safer and are on the road to ageing, with the maximum temperature of 25 potentially covered, but the ideal temperature of 10-15 for a safe, slow ageing process is far from a guarantee. This is where money and effort start to come into play. Money can get you wine fridge, which is a particularly neat and simple option, whereas effort (and potentially money) can get you the fun and idealistic underground wine cellar.

A small wine fridge start at around the $150 mark, but will often not have a compressor at this price, resulting in less ability to cool if put in a really hot room. $500 will get you a good quality 32 bottle wine fridge you can be confident will last and then price and options grow from there. These can be a great addition to a living space or can look quite appealing replacing one of the kitchen cupboards, just remember to watch sunlight if they're not tinted.

Ahh, the underground cellar. It has to be the pinnacle of wine storage options. Combine it with a secret 'James Bond' style entrance they can be very entertaining and add value to your home. However, in this case I am talking about practical options so in this area we are limited.
I have included a picture of a prefabricated wine cellar that stood out to me as something a little special, in which you can get quite a few options of typically concrete shells that can be placed in the ground and buried. Alternatively mates have used a buried shipping container or excavated into the side of a rise.

If it all sounds too hard, but you want a guarantee, there is a simple way, an off-premise wine storage facility. If you live within close proximity of a city there are plenty of options for you, but it ain't the most exciting way to look after your wine.

So you're now looking after your wine, now what?

Peak drinking depends so much on the wine, cellaring conditions and personal taste that it is not possible to have a general rule for all wine. I'll leave you with a quick tip that hopefully doesn't leave a sour taste… You decide what works for you and the best way to do that is with plenty of practice, which means you need to get out there and try many wines young and old.

Christmas Wine Pairings

Sun, 24 Dec 2017 13:30:00 GMT

The Christmas feast is just about our favourite thing about the festive season. Having emigrated from the UK, Bec's family celebrate Christmas with the traditional English feast of turkey, ham and deliciously crispy roast potatoes. Scott's big farming family add lots of modern Aussie BBQ and seafood to the mix, as well as Nan's famous stuffed potatoes and caramel tarts!

When planning your own family's big meal, don't forget to plan your wine pairings. A great wine match can bring the meal to another level, bringing out the best flavours in the food.

Warming Up

In our opinion, there's no better Aussie summer canape than delicious grilled Haloumi. We love the local producer, the Barossa Cheese Company and grill it with lemon juice and a dash of salt and pepper.

The salt and citrus flavours will pair perfectly with the crisp acidity of an Eden Valley or Clare Valley Riesling. Why not try yourself with our Eden Valley Riesling?

Seafood is light with delicate flavours, so need a light wine to balance. An unoaked Chardonnay will be a good pairing for prawns, and we've found (by lots of personal experience!) that Riesling is perfect with atlantic salmon.

And while some may think you can't make friends with salad, matching it with a fresh, tangy Sauvignon Blanc will be assured to win over the carnivorous types!

Barbequed Delights

When pairing wine with barbeque food, it's all about the intensity of the cooking. For a big, charred and smoky barbeque, the wine needs to be equally big and bold to match - a light wine could taste insipid next to strong barbeque flavours. A full bodied Shiraz or Cab Sauv from a warm climate like Barossa or McLaren Vale will be your best bet.

When cooking a bit lighter and softer, the same should go for the wine. A cool/mild climate red from Eden Valley will match most cuts, but for really lean meat, you may want to go a cooler climate with an Adelaide Hills wine.

The Main Event

A good rule of thumb with meats is that higher fat content suit wines with a higher tannin content.

For turkey, which is quite lean, a wine with lower tannins will match well. Full flavoured whites such as chardonnay will have the right acid balance to match well, or else for reds, an aged Merlot or Cabernet blend will work, as they tend to have lower tannin concentration than the bigger Cabernets and Shiraz, and ageing polymerises tannins, causing them to soften, and won't over-power the lean turkey.

For other roast meats, consider the cut - a lean cut will suit the same reds as turkey, but a more oily cut will suit a Cabernet Sauvignon.

All about the Wayward girls who lived in our Eden Valley Cellar Door before we did...

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 13:30:00 GMT

Our quaint little cellar door has an interesting history. The original homestead of Eden Valley, the cottage was build 160 years ago in 1856. While it has many tales to tell, one that stuck with us was the story of the Wayward Girls.

In the early 1900s the cottage became a home for 'Wayward' city girls. These girls were sent away from friends and family in Adelaide to spare their families the 'shame' of unmarried pregnancy. We have so much sympathy for these girls who, already going through a hard time, were sent to the back of beyond, before having to give up their newborns.

Later in the 20th century the cottage fell to ruins, before Bryce and Bronnie spent years faithfully restoring the rubble back to its former glory. We're now so lucky to be able to share this little historical gem with our customers as Fernfield's cellar door.

The Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc were grown in our little vineyard behind the winery on our property.

We have put a lot of work into getting the right soil nutrients through comprehensive soil testing and nutrient additions such as organic compost and straw, so that we can be sure our grapes of the best quality they can possibly be.

To get the optimal ripening conditions, we use canopy management including manual shoot thinning and topping.

The grapes were all picked by hand, with the Merlot coming off in April and Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc hanging on late and developing on vine until just into May 2014. Bec and I called in the help of family and friends, but don't worry, we paid them well for their work with a BBQ lunch. Going back through the photos I've just noticed we made them cook it too...

Each of the components of the blend were fermented separately, with hand plunging around the clock to extract colour and flavours. After at least 7 days on skins we basket pressed and aged the wine on oak for just over 24 months.

The resulting wine is a careful blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (51%), Merlot (43%) and Cabernet Franc (6%) to produce a wine of finesse and elegance.

For the 160 year celebration of the cottage, we wanted to develop some special artwork to honour the wayward girls.

Meet Patrick Cunningham, a great artist and friend who kindly agreed to make the label. Pat toiled away using a range of mediums to get some great effects and give life to the faceless and nameless girls who faced such hard times in Rushlea cottage almost 100 years ago.

And here's the final result!

The 2014 Wayward Girl is our most elegant and lightest red, with tannin structure to age, but ready to drink now and featuring a fruity nose of plum, cherry and earthy clove .

Chocolate & Wine

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 13:30:00 GMT

Why pair wine and chocolate you ask? Because it's CHOCOLATE & WINE!

It's something we have been tinkering with for quite some time, with things getting a little more serious just after a chocolate and wine pairing session held at the National Wine Centre in conjunction with Haigh's Chocolate.

Here some great wines and amazing chocolate were paired and put to the test. For us the results included some great pairings with big reds and sweet wines, but there was some trouble for the light and medium bodied dry wines. A general rule is to avoid having the chocolate sweeter than the wine as sweetness highlights harsh astringency in the wine, but here lies the problem... Dark chocolate is generally the only chocolate with suitably low sugar, however dark chocolate's powerful flavours outstrip light and medium body dry wines. For us this was a call for something different, "Challenge Accepted"!

Where to start making our own chocolate? Here some nerdy engineering came into play with the fun of researching the equipment required to make fine chocolate. We quickly realised that a big factor is called 'long conching', which is essentially finely grinding the cacao for a long period of time to form a smooth and velvety texture. We quickly realised that supermarket ingredients were not going to cut it and teamed up with Maretai Organics and Inspired Ingredients to get us started. Here comes the fun part, testing and tasting, right? Umm, no, no it doesn't, here comes seized chocolatey messes and a lesson, chocolate is a temperamental little pest.

We soon found that some more learning, experimentation and precision was required. A few learnings; reducing sugar increases the viscosity and makes things hard to work with, you can't let in ANY moisture from steam or ingredients (no Cadbury doesn't pour milk into their chocolate like on tv) and tempering requires precise control and a feel for what the chocolate is doing.

Here's a short pictorial to take you through;

Our chocolate making process...

Thanks to Maretai for the raw ingredient photos!

One of the finished products:

Ok, experiments are done and lessons learnt, now for the testing and tasting! We have tried A LOT of fun and different ingredients, combinations and chocolate recipes. Some pairings brilliantly highlighted something in the wine or chocolate and some completely stripped the other one of anything enjoyable. We have found in general the sugar we ended up with is significantly lower than a standard chocolate, which means it's much healthier ... except for the extra cacao that we use instead, but let's not worry about that :)

So far the feedback we are getting is encouraging, with most people finding highlighted flavours when using the suggested pairings.

Your turn! We have created a chocolate and wine pairing experience for you at our cellar door and are keen for your thoughts on our pairings. We are planning and testing pairings for future vintages and may have some experiments at the cellar door where you can help us pick the best match.