New Eden Valley reds are here!
June 11, 2019
Green returns to Eden Valley and we have some new wines!

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 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.

It's vintage time in the Barossa! In between picking, pressing and fermenting grapes, Scott and I are still meeting our customers at the cellar door each Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Below are answers to some of the most common questions we are asked during vintage time. How do we decide when to pick grapes? We use a range of factors to choose when to pick the grapes, with the most important being the various aspects of 'ripeness' of the fruit. these aspects include: Baume: This is the sugar content, and therefore alcohol potential, of the grape. Whites are usually ripe at around 10.5-13.5 Baume, and reds at 13-15 Baume, and in March conditions in Eden Valley most varieties ripen at about 0.8-1 Baume per week. This is a good rough indicator but because seasons and vineyards vary, it's not enough to know if the grape is ripe. Acidity: We measure the pH, and the 'titratable acidity' of juice, and it's more important in whites than reds. The titratable acidity is a better measure of how the wine will taste, a juice above 8.5g/L acidity will often be too tart (depending on the variety, style and sweetness we're aiming for), and many years we pick whites as soon as the acidity has dropped past 8.5. Grape taste & looks: As well as these simple measurements, we also look at a range of factors on the grape itself: How plump it feels, the colour of the seeds and stems, how thick the pulp is, and how the juice and skins taste. Based on these ripeness aspects, we will look at the weather forecast to predict how long it is until the grape is ready to pick. Hot weather ripens faster than cold, up to about 36deg. Above 36 it's possible for the vines to shut down and stop ripening entirely until the weather cools down, so it's important we test grapes just before and after heatwaves like the one we've just had. As we get closer to ripe we will test more and more often, to drill down to the exact date we want to pick. What do you do with the pressed grape skins? We feed them to our sheep!

Managing our little cellar door during COVID has resulted in a number of learnings for us including a surprise one, that both our visitors and us have really enjoyed our booked experiences. Making an appointment means we can do a range of fun wine experiences which just can't work when we're flat out with lots of guests. This more personalised experience means plenty of one-on-one time to not only learn about our wines and all the winemaking, but also adapting to what you're feeling on the day such as a tour, getting through all the questions you might have about wine, maybe a little of the latest local banter or a serene picnic out on our lawn doing your own thing. We know sometimes booking can be a chore, so we've made it as easy. We've set it up so you can book on our website, directly from Facebook or Google, the old fashioned way by just giving Bec a call on 0402 788 526 or send through an email on rebecca@fernfieldwines.com.au. We are really happy to have you visit whatever way works best for you. Unique Experiences

I ntroduction: An Imperfect Science There's often talk of wine tasting being an art, rather than a science. Wine chemistry is definitely a complicated form of science, but the current technology just isn't good enough to measure many wine aromas, and here arises the art. For example, a recent study on wine compounds called mercaptans* could measure down to a very impressive 0.0000000001%, however the human nose can still detect smaller quantities 1 .