About Steve Shipley

I am a wine enthusiast and writer without affiliation to commercial wine ventures or firms in the wine industry to ensure my opinions and points of view are strictly my own. I have enjoyed wine increasingly over the last 20 years and present many of my views and learning through this blog. My book, Wine Sense, consolidates what I have learned about enjoying wine and enhancing wine drinking experiences which I look forward to passing onto you.

First review in on Vino DeCanto wine preserver

I attended the Newcastle Food and Wine show several weeks ago, and was intrigued and bought one of the very first Vino DeCanto wine preservers ever sold.  Up until now, I have used a manual air extraction pump to preserve an open bottle of good wine for several days, but it certainly does not preserve wine for several weeks or longer.  Vino DeCanto claims they have stored wine in the preserver for up to 14 months!.

I have been exploring buying an expensive four-bottle argon replacement system to keep up to four bottles of wine open for longer periods of time and have also been reviewing the use of WineSave and CoravinWineSave is an argon replacement unit which is good for about 50 applications.  Coravin is unique in that it sticks a fine needle through the cork of a bottle, extracts the amount required and then replaces the wine with argon gas.  The Vino DeCanto operates differently in that it does not replace the empty space with argon (or similar) gas, but rather eliminates the space all together by using a plunger with an O-ring sealer to keep the remaining wine away from air.

Wine PReserver Decanter by VinoDeCanto

Now that I have used it several times, I feel comfortable providing a review of my findings.

The positives:

  • The Vino DeCanto does the job as advertised and preserves the wine.  I had approximately a half-bottle of 1998 Lindeman’s St. George Cabernet Sauvignon (a most outstanding wine BTW!) in the Vino DeCanto for 14 days and it tasted as fresh as when I opened the bottle.  It had not lost fruit, had not turned brown nor in any other manner look or taste different than when I opened it.  The Vino DeCanto does the job!
  • You do not need to continue to buy argon capsules to fill wine bottles; therefore your initial investment in the Vino DeCanto is your entire investment.
  • The Vino DeCanto is beautifully engineered, of very high quality and quite attractive to look at.

The negatives:

  • The Vino DeCanto preserver is heavy and somewhat cumbersome to move around.
  • You can only use it for one bottle at a time, whereas WineSave or Coravin can be used on multiple bottles you have opened.  Therefore, if you want to keep several bottles open at a time, you need to purchase several Vino DeCantos.
  • It is operationally difficult to use without squirting wine out of the top or dripping from the spout.  Even after several uses and being careful about what I was doing, I still had a small mess to clean up each time I have used it.
  • The height of the Vino DeCanto is less than the height of a typical red wine glass, so you either need to mount the device on a stand or hold the glass at an angle underneath the spout.
  • It is difficult to judge how long to push the plunger for as the wine trails for a while after you stop pushing the plunger, so it is easy to overfill the glass

I purchased my Vino DeCanto for Aus $229 at the show price.  It is expected to retail for around $300.  WineSave costs about $35 and is good for approximately 50 applications before you need to buy another one.  Coravin costs about $300 and the replacement capsules cost around $10 (more or less based on how many you) buy and are good for around 15 uses per capsule.  Both WineSave and Coravin can be used on as many bottles as you have opened.  I have not used the Coravin myself, but several friends, including some of Sydney’s top sommeliers have and swear by it.

Given the price, limitation of only being able to use it on one bottle at a time, and the operational challenges I encountered with the Vino DeCanto, I am unlikely to buy another one unless I can be convinced it is easier to use than I have found it.  I may be looking at the Coravin as my ongoing solution to preserving fine wines.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, available now!
© 2014.  Steve Shipley. All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

Eat local, drink foreign: Not for me!

There has been a trend over the last decade to eat locally produced food, representative of region and season.  This has become popular because (1) food in season and region are fresher and tastier than when transported from further away, and (2) people want  sustainable, ‘green’ food chains to protect the environment.  These ideals make sense and I embrace them.  So then why do restauranteurs and sommeliers think it is trendy to offer wine lists which are made up of foreign, obscure wines using tertiary varietals?  It does not make sense and has been overdone in my opinion.  This recent article by Huon Hooke nails it in terms of wine lists becoming ‘too’ trendy.  I don’t get the diversion in trends to eat locally and drink foreign?  I would think consumers of good food and wine would trend similarly for both their food and wine.

Wine listI live in the Hunter Valley wine region and love my local wines, especially with local food.  I also value and like access to trying wines from different regions around Australia and the world.  One of the great attractions of wine is the great diversity of styles, varietals and methods use to make wine.  But when I travel to other locations, I want to experience the best of what is on offer locally, in terms of both food and wine.  When I visited Canberra and Rutherglen recently, I want to sample Canberra and Rutherglen wines!

I remember picking up a Mexican friend at the airport in Minneapolis a long while ago.  The woman sitting next to him on the plane was from Minnesota and insisted I take him to Boca Chica’s for the best tacos around.  I thought “how stupid is this?”  My friend can get great tacos (and even better ‘real’ Mexican food) at home.  I – and more importantly he – wanted to experience food unique to the region such as Scandinavian or Swedish food, or just a good Midwestern pot roast!  The last thing my Mexican friend wanted was to eat Mexican food!  And he certainly was not interested in drinking a Dos XX beer – he wanted to try Minnesota beers.

Jim Chatto, Chief Winemaker at McWilliams Mount Pleasant and Chairman of the Judges for the Hunter Valley Wine Show last night stated that since he moved to Mount Pleasant, he removed from the restaurant wine list McWilliams wines made in other regions (McWilliams is a large multi-regional winery in Australia) to focus on local Hunter wines to go with local fare.  This makes great sense to me.  I have three favorite restaurants I visit in the area:  Bistro Molines in Hunter Valley, Paymasters Cafe in Newcastle and Two Naughty Chooks in Singleton.  Without exception, they all have great food.  Paymasters and Two Naughty Chooks offer a wine list of about 60 wines, with Bistro Molines offering twice that.  They all offer some wines outside the region and some foreign wines (especially Bistro Molines).  But all three have wine lists representing the Hunter region, at great value, and many by the glass.  I love these restaurants, not just for the great food on offer, but because the owners have put so much effort into providing local wines to match the season and local food they make.  I love eating locally and drinking locally!

Trendy, obscure, tertiary varietal wine lists with over 1,000 bottles to chose from – no thank you – to much work and too much risk.  I appreciate a restaurant where the restauranteur / owner has done the hard work for me and can offer me the best of local food and wine.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, due out Sept 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley. All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

How do we taste wine? Ask Maurice O’Shea

How do we taste wine?  How do we appreciate what wine has to offer?  As explained in my upcoming book Wine Sense, we taste wine through our senses.  The concept of taste is cross-modal, using our eyes, our nose and our mouth.  Tasting wine comes together through all the human senses.  But four senses prevail when appreciating wine.  Sight, smell, taste (specifically through our taste buds) and mouth feel.  But our sight is so predominant, it often overrules what we experience with our nose and our mouth.  This sometimes causes stimulus errors which deceive us when drinking wine.  Wine Sense teaches us how to smell and taste wine better.  It provides an understanding and techniques you can use to trust what is in your nose and what is in your mouth.  Many believe they can never achieve this, but I do and that is why I have made the effort with Wine Sense in an attempt to help you to gain trust in your nose and mouth.

Maurice OSheaMaurice O’Shea was one of Australia’s, if not the world’s, best wine makers.  He also had bad eyesight.  I am reading Campbell Mattinson’s great book on O’Shea entitled Wine Hunter.  It tells of O’Shea having just found out he cannot join the French army in WW1 because his eyesight is so bad.  Happy about this turn of events (which allowed him to study viticulture and winemaking), he shouts a nice meal out for his friends in Montpellier.  They allow the chef to prepare what he likes.  They are happy, eating and drinking, but O’Shea realizes the texture and taste of the meat to be different, even though his friends do not.  They later find out they have been eating domestic cat as meat is scarce during the war in France.

As Mattinson relates of young Maurice: “he wondered whether his taste and smell had grown more acute as his eyes had dimmed, as if his other senses had become heightened, as if his sense of smell and his sense of taste had developed into his gift.”  Mattinson goes on to describe what O’Shea learned about himself that night: “and he knew something in himself that he had not known before – he could trust his mouth.  He could trust his nose. He could feel the taste of things that others could not.”

Until you learn to trust your nose and your mouth, you will be sold wine, you will be told how to taste wine, and you will be told what you like by others.  When you learn to trust your nose and your mouth to taste wine, you then learn to truly enjoy and appreciate wine more.  And as O’Shea points out, by dimming your sense of sight, you can attune your nose and mouth more acutely.  You can learn from others, especially when drinking in the presence of others who know more about wine tasting than you do.  Learn from them, but learn to trust your nose and mouth.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, due out July 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley. All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

2013 Kelman Cate’s Paddock Chardonnay

The vineyard where we live is known for making decent, but not great wines.  However, over the years, they have won a few medals and produced some exceptional wines.  I was taken by surprise today tasting the 2013 Kelman Cate’s Paddock Chardonnay.  It is magnificent for such a young wine.  Tangerine and rock melon flavors, orange citrus flavoring, nutty and honey also.  But most impressively, this wine has body!  It has medium-plus body and structure and smooth, yet full texture which fills the mouth and finishes long.

The Cate’s Paddock line is meant to be the second tier of Kelman wines, but with some of the best 2013 Chardonnay grapes and the way it has been structured, this wine should be getting some top prizes.  It will not last long at the cellar door at the price.  If you are coming through the Hunter Valley, you need to stop by Kelman Estate and definitely buy some of this wine.  After tasting it today, I picked up a dozen on the spot and will be getting another dozen to cellar for a few years – it is an outstanding buy.

2013 Kelman ChardAs it is getting into winter, we are having our first winter soup for dinner this evening.  My wife is making one of my favorites, which is wild rice and mushroom soup.  As rich and creamy as the soup is, we usually have a Montrachet to go with it, or a Penfolds Yatarnna.  However, this evening we are drinking the 2013 Kelman Cate’s Paddock Chardonnay at a fraction of the cost of a Montrachet!  This is a fine, fine wine and will be sold out soon, so make sure to stop by and get some while supplies last.  And if you do, let me know so we can share a glass together!

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, due out July 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

 

Wine Sense preorder campaign launched!

The Wine Sense preorder campaign has started in earnest!  To secure your copy, just click here!  You will be provided an overview of the book, the plan to publish and the details of many great preorder packages and corporate patronage packages available, including:

Personal orders and personal and corporate sponsorships (all prices in US$)

  • Ebook for $10
  • Hardcopy copy for $25
  • Author signed hardcopy for $50
  • Patron author signed hardcopy sponsorship including Acknowledgment in book, and on websites for one year for $100 – $500
  • Great corporate team building and client entertainment events and sponsorships

All hardcover copy orders includes free Ebook version if ordered before April 15, 2014!

winesense_2bSign up now at www.publishizer.com/wine-sense!

Wine Sense is approximately 300 pages, has 22 Chapters and is broken into four Parts:

  • Part One:  Wine and the Senses
  • Part Two:  How Wine Interacts with the Senses
  • Part Three:  Enhancing Your Wine Drinking Experiences
  • Part Four:  Where to Next?

Part 1: Wine and the Senses provides an overview and framework for understanding how wine interacts with the senses and why this can be pleasurable.  Part 2: How Wine Interacts with the Senses provides a thorough explanation of how wine interacts with each sense to heighten your wine drinking experience.  Part 3: Enhancing Your Wine Drinking Experiences offers a a simple approach and pragmatic tips to ensure your wine drinking is as enjoyable as it can be.  Then Part 4: Where to Next? points you in the direction of other resources and ideas on how to continue to deepen and mature your pleasure with wine.

Wine Sense will be published published in June/July, 2014.

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out July 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

Don’t be caught out by wine stimulus errors

My upcoming book Wine Sense describes what a wine stimulus error is and how to avoid them. A wine stimulus error occurs when conditions around us play a significant part in our assessing a wine’s taste and quality. This is especially true when our sense of sight is involved as it is so predominant over our gustatory senses of smell, taste, and feel. We are so confident in what we perceive through sight that it overrides what we experience through our other senses. Sometimes people selling wine intentionally create stimulus errors to entice us to purchase more or pay a higher price than we should. (This topic is discussed in detail in Wine Sense, Chapter 17: Buying and Storing Wine.) Typical visual stimulus errors you should be aware of and consciously avoid include:

  • Assessing wine sealed with cork as being better than wine sealed with screw cap
  • Assessing wine in a box being worse than wine in a bottle
  • Viewing a fancy or imported label as containing better wine than those with simple label
  • Being tricked to believe white wine with red wine dye tastes like red wine
  • Dark, aesthetic settings (cellar door tasting rooms) for tasting wine we are considering buying increases our perception of higher quality wine
  • Providing leniency and over-rating a wine when we are in the presence of the winemaker, other winery staff or so-called ‘experts’ who are proclaiming the wine excellent when it is not

Up until about five years ago, these last two points above have caused me to buy wine or overpay for wine which did not taste nearly as good when I opened a bottle under different circumstances a few months later. I had been deceived by the surrounding ambiance and ‘expertise’ of those with me. While conducting research for this book, I was surprised how much research I found on designing wine labels. This is an extremely large field of study and there appears to be more courses on wine label design than there are on wine making and vineyard management. The industry knows how important wine label design is on wine sales and they work hard at getting labels right. Some people cannot bring themselves to drinking a cleanskin wine (bottle of wine without a label affixed) even if they have confidence they know what wine is in the bottle. They have a preconceived notion that cleanskins are made from low quality grapes (otherwise, why would it be a cleanskin?). I know people who have dismissed extremely fine wines out of refusal to drink anything without a label affixed to it even when the provenance supports the wine in the bottle to be of high quality.

wine dude

Is the wine in the glass in the photo above any better because it is being served by some good looking dude in a fancy jacket in the vineyard? No, but you probably will taste it and think it is better than it really is! With more experience and practice, you develop more confidence and can avoid getting caught out by wine stimulus errors. Have confidence in what you are tasting, not what the label, the color of the wine or those around you are saying!

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

What dessert wine with chocolate mousse?

Several weeks ago, we had a great dinner with two other couples.  We started with salmon mousse tarts and a choice of a Hunter Valley Semillon or a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.  Even though we knew it was going to be a scorcher of a day, everyone wanted DAZ in the Kitchen’s famous beef stroganoff which we paired with a 2009 Bouchard Pere & Fils Pulingy-Montrachet.  We wanted to have creme brulee for dessert, but did not have a torch available, so decided to go with chocolate mousse instead.  (The recipe for all courses is provided in the obvious links.)

I had a number of good sticky dessert wines, including some very nice Sauternes to go with creme brulee, but was uncertain as to what dessert wine would work well with chocolate mousse.  After some internal debate including considering Port or Muscat, I felt a peppery Hunter Valley Shiraz could work, so put aside a 2007 Tyrrell’s Stevens Shiraz.  This is a typical high-end Hunter Valley Shiraz from a great vintage.  However, through the generosity of our guests and them offering to help determine what dessert wine to drink with chocolate mousse, we had a bottle of Ivanhoe Madeira and Audrey Wilkinson Muscat to choose from.  I also had a bottle of 1993 Lindeman’s Porphyry leftover from the evening before (notice the small cork bits in the bottle from the shattered 20-year-old cork).  So we decided to try all three dessert wines and the main lesson learned is that sweet wine and sweet food match quite well, regardless of other characteristics involved!  All three wines provided unique, but pleasurable drinking experiences while eating chocolate mousse.

Three dessert wines to go with chocolate mousseThe Porphyry was sweet, almost too sugary due to its age and worked better as a dessert wine with the apple tart we had the night before.  Yet, it provided a viscous mouthfeel that felt good with chocolate mousse and set off well the strawberries adorning the chocolate mousse.  The Madeira was sweeter yet, but sharper in taste and complimented, almost competed with the chocolate mousse.  The Muscat (which was one of my original alternatives to consider as the dessert wine) probably worked the best as it less sweet, containing caramelized orange flavors to compliment the chocolate flavors of the mousse.

But the key lesson learned was that almost any dessert wine worked!  Looking back, I wish I would have also pulled out a few different Ports wines as I think they could have worked as well as the Muscat or even better.

What wines have you served with chocolate mousse?  Let me know if you have any good suggestions.

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

Save all wine sales receipts – this week’s #SAZTIP

Most of us buy wine with the intent of consuming it.  We do not expect to sell wine off in the future.  I certainly did not plan on it, but then I found myself in a position where it made sense to sell off a lot of my wine.  There are many plausible reasons you may elect to sell off wine, including:

  • Your taste has changed and you like different styles now
  • Your health has changed
  • You find you have wine coming to end of life and will not be able to drink it in time
  • You may just want to free up cash and realize that wine sales is a good way to raise funds

Provenance_stampAnd if you do plan to sell wine, you will be glad that you saved all your wine sales receipts!  There are several good auction and exchange firms to handle your selling needs (one of the best is Wickman’s Fine Wine Auctions), but most of them (and the ones you want to be doing business with) require provenance.  Provenance is proof that the wine has been stored under optimal conditions throughout its life and has the very best chance of being cared for as well as any bottle can be.  And the best source of provenance is your wine sales receipts along with journal entries and time-stamped photos of you taken delivery of the wine and immediately putting the wine in proper storage.  But the most important thing is your wine sales receipts.  It proves you bought the wine directly from the winery or a major wine retailer with some certainty the wine has been looked after properly up to the time you took possession of it.  To further strengthen provenance, you should have records of when you build or secured your cellar, have photographs of it and the wine in the cellar and records of having placed the wine in the cellar.  But none of this matters if you have not saved your wine sales receipts!

And even if you are certain you will never sell off wine in the future, your wine sales receipts provide a record of what you paid for wine which is useful in terms of understanding wine values and how much to pay for wine in the future.  It does not take a lot of effort to save your wine sales receipts.  If you are uncertain if you will need them, throw them into a box and store them for potential future use.  At least you will have them if you require them later.

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

 

Presenting Wine Sense Table of Contents

I have basically finished Wine Sense and in the next few weeks Wine Sense will be in the hands of approximately ten reviewers to critique it and provide ways to make it better.  I finished the content of the book two months ago, but (1) wanted to let it rest for a while to be able to read it as a typical reader (to the best of the ability of any author to read the material they wrote!), and (2) there is a lot of work in terms of providing proper citation to other references, adding 40 images and inclusion of Top Tips and Fun Facts insets for most chapters.  Then it is onto final layout and publication.

Steve sniffing 2But the content of Wine Sense is close to complete, so I wanted to provide a deeper sense of what the book is about and why Wine Sense may be of interest to you.  Over the next few months, I will be presenting excerpts and helpful tips from the book.  First I wanted to share the Table of Contents (TOC) with you.  Just reading the TOC should provide a good overview and sense of what is in the book.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction

Part One: Wine and the Senses

Chapter 1: Wine Enjoyment
Chapter 2: Role of Our Senses for Wine Enjoyment
Chapter 3: Philosophy of Primary and Secondary Senses
Chapter 4: Wine as an Aesthetic Experience
Chapter 5: Role of Language in Wine Appreciation

Part Two: How Wine Interacts with the Senses

Chapter 6: Overview of Wine and Sense Interaction
Chapter 7: Wine and Sight
Chapter 8: Wine and Smell
Chapter 9: Wine and Taste
Chapter 10: Wine and Feel
Chapter 11: Wine and Sound

Part Three: Enhancing Your Wine Drinking Experiences

Chapter 12: Improving Smell and Taste Sensations
Chapter 13: Improving Sight Sensations
Chapter 14: Improving Feel Sensations
Chapter 15: Improving Sound Sensations
Chapter 16: Other Ideas for Improving Your Wine Drinking Experience
Chapter 17: Buying and Storing Wine
Chapter 18: Wine Drinking Practice and Experience

Part Four: Where to Next?

Chapter 19: Tools and Systems for Managing Your Wine Inventory
Chapter 20: Further Wine Education
Chapter 21: Other References
Chapter 22: Final Thoughts

Appendices

Appendix A: Castro’s Ten Descriptors of Odors
Appendix B: Robinson’s Wine Color Chart
Appendix C: Wine Database Format and Field Listing

Bibliography
Endnotes

I originally was going to write a blog post last year on why our senses were so important in appreciating wine, how they work, and how to improve using our senses to enjoy wine more.  Once the post got to 2,500 words, I decided I was going to make it a multi-part post, but by the time I got to 12,000 words, I knew it had to be a book!  The book is currently 112,000 words so it was probably a good idea to go the book route!  I am very excited to tell you more over the next few months and to get the book into your hands as soon as possible.  More posts to follow.

Please let me know what you think about the content and structure.  Any feedback is appreciated.

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

2014 grape picking underway in Hunter Valley

This should be a spectacular vintage in The Hunter Valley.  Weather has been perfect and hopefully will hold for a while longer.  The 2013 vintage was hit by torrential late-season rains that made grape picking at the optimal time difficult and yields of great grapes low.  Based on the region and grape varietal, grape picking in Australia occurs from January to April each year.  Growing seasons are obviously dictated by the annual weather patterns and type of grape involved.  We were one of the first to start picking Chardonnay at Kelman Vineyards last week.  Tyrrell’s was also picking their Chardonnay grapes for their iconic Vat 47.

My wife, DAZ in the Kitchen,  and I have noticed since we started cooking, how much more we have have enjoyed our food, regardless if we make it ourselves or are eating out.  We are more attuned to the entire process of food preparation and better understand what seasonings, flavors and processes (steaming versus boiling,  or if the meat is seared first or not for example) are involved and how to get the most enjoyment while eating.  It is similar with wine.

2014-01-09 06.13.36

In my upcoming book, Wine Sense, I discuss a number of ways to learn more about wine and have fun doing so.  Grape picking and other volunteer work around the vineyards and winery is a great way of learning while having fun!  I have always enjoyed drinking wine, but I now enjoy it more by appreciating how each step from growing and processing the grapes to bottling has influenced the quality of the final product.  Grape picking and having the grape juice on your hands and smelling the juice in its rawest form builds anticipation for what the wine will taste like.  In one sense, my bodily senses are experiencing the wine well in advance of actually drinking it.  Talk about prolonging the experience and getting maximum value from a bottle of wine!

2014-01-09 06.16.46You also learn a great deal in a very short period of time.  You learn to identify ‘ready-to-pick’ grapes versus ‘still-growing’ grapes.  You learn to identify if a bunch or a few grapes in the bunch have become ruinous and should be discarded.  You learned how stems and leaves are introduced when grape picking and some can be all right in terms of flavor and improving tannins, but you also learn not to be too picky or your grape picking productivity slows significantly!  There are processes later on to remove the stems anyway.  And you learn to start very early, 6 am in our case, before the heat overwhelms you!

Getting involved in any aspect of vineyard management or wine making is a great way to learn and appreciate wine more!  Other ideas on getting involved are presented in Wine Sense.

Kelman Vineyards is a beautiful spot in The Hunter Valley which has about 85 home owners.  It is a cooperative vineyard with grapes, olives and lemons grown under the management of a body corporate.  There are plenty of opportunities for the owners to volunteer their time from serving at the cellar door (requires an RSA), netting the vines, picking grapes, bottling olive oil and so forth and includes picking snails off the vines if you are so inclined!  I was one of many volunteer owners who helped out with the season’s first grape picking last week.  You realize what a manual process it can be, and you learn very quickly how to cut and collect bunches of grapes without snipping yourself or wasting grapes in the process.  Grape picking is also great exercise and community involvement.

2014-01-09 07.25.21

The annual grape picking and harvesting for a vintage is an annual festivity in many regions of the world with the whole community involved.  Willian Younger in his great book, Gods Men and Wine, starts out by describing the Vintage on the Douro and how year after year, the community comes together for grape picking and harvesting.  It is a festival of celebration shared by the entire community.  Kelman has recreated a localized version of that for us as owners which I find exhilarating and an educational experience.  If you want to learn more on how to appreciate wine, get involved in grape picking and other activities in the vineyard and winery.  And may sure to look for my upcoming book, Wine Sense to learn even more!

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley.  All rights reserved.
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub