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:

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.