Vineyard & Winery

Winter, is the grape grower's favourite time, in many ways it is the start of the season or the re-birth of the vines. The vines shut down during autumn and are dormant over winter; this is when we prune them back.

We're just about to start pruning, at the begining of July. Pruning is the when we cut away all the wood from last year's growth and leave specific buds to produce the next season's fruit. We look at each vine individually and decide how we'd like it to grow during the next year. These decisions are influenced by which wine the fruit is destined for.

Winter is a fabulous time to be outside; as the sun rises the vineyard is shrouded in mist, clearing during the early morning. By midmorning it's often warm enough to prune in just a T-shirt. Most of the Swan Valley's annual rainfall falls during the winter months, and generally at night resulting in crisp mornings and sunny days, mind you its been really icey these last few weeks!

The cooler weather encourages cosy nights by the fire enjoying a glass of Shiraz, and perhaps a bit of slow roasting. Long days of pruning are particularly conducive to these sort of thoughts.

Spring sends Derek back into the winery, blending reds from the previous vintages, and monitoring the maturation of the vintage wines. We also prepare the Reserve Chardonnay and some of the previous vintage's red wines ready for bottling. I'm delighted to say that I've already got him back working on the liqueur muscat...so it ought to be available for Christmas!

Budburst on the vines heralds the next phase in the growing cycle, we analyse the soil and the leaf growth to check the vines' health and the leaves almost seem to grow in front of our eyes. We start to monitor for pests and diseases on a daily basis.

The canopy of new growth (the leaves) on the vines is carefully managed, tucked up by hand and trimmed to optimise fruit quality.

The first appearance of the bunches is called fruit set after this we spend time monitoring and managing the crop levels, the number of bunches of grapes per vine. This is to ensure that we grow the best possible fruit each season.

The Spring in the Valley festival is a special weekend when lots of visitors come to the Swan Valley to celebrate the arrival of spring and to try the newly released wines from the last vintage! we've got a fantastic Salsa Concert planned, with limited numbers, so get your ticket soon, bring a picnic and enjoy!

Summer means vintage in the Swan Valley. It's busy but exciting in the winery, the culmination of all the hard work in the vineyard and the very beginning of the year's new wines.

Vintage begins in the last week of January, depending on the weather and grape ripening. In the winery everyone is flat out, all day every day. The hand picked fruit for our Sparkling Chardonnay is first, and then the Verdelho followed by the Chardonnay for both the Unwooded and then the Reserve.

We may get a week or so to catch our breath, and work on the white wines, the its back into the fray with the reds! The Merlot fruit is generally handpicked first, followed by Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and finally the raisin-ed Muscat.

Our first pick was Thursday 21 Jan 2010; Chardonnay for the 2010 Sparkling.

The 2010 vintage is looking really good. We got all the white grapes picked and safely into the winery before the horrid week of heat hit; they look great, very aromatic and full flavoured.

By Autumn the frenzy is over in the winery, but they are still hard at it, this is when Derek gets to use his technical expertise with skillful racking, blending, transferring the wine into barrels and monitoring the maturation of the vintage wines.

They are also preparing the wines for bottling, the Verdelho, Unwooded Chardonnay and the year before's Shiraz, which has spent 12 months in the best French oak. Bottling happens in mid May, and then we all take a short holiday...ready to start the growing cycle again....

We've just released two completely new wines, The GIG and the GIG Shiraz; the idea behind them was Stirling's inital exploration of Western Australia