Short and sweet!

After 27 years, this is the earliest start to vintage we have experienced. We harvested our Black Muscat on 31 January, not long after we’d finished clipping the bird netting.

A big week to follow with Verdelho and Chardonnay grapes coming in a few days apart and bottling one of our reds in the same week.

I’m in love with our air bag press even though we still bucket the grapes into the press, it is so much easier to operate than the basket press.

All our estate grown grapes at Pyramids Road Wines are hand harvested by a trusty, loyal team of volunteers. This year, we welcomed some new pickers and we’re always grateful for our faithful crews who return most years. Sorry to all those pickers who missed out this year due to the early and shortened vintage. Everything seemed to come in at once.

Some good winter rain soaked the ground so budburst was strong due to abundant soil moisture. A dry spring with some wild storms delivering rain and hail in November. Unfortunately the hail storm reduced our crop this year so yields were halved. Very little rain to follow for summer and now autumn. Whilst most of Queensland has been flooded, we’re most likely the only place in the state where it hasn’t rained. The lack of rain however allowed the canopy to stay dry mitigating any disease pressure.

The bottling

Always busy at the start of the year with bottling all our red wines from barrel to make room for the new fruit coming in.

The Barrel Ferment Chardonnay is bottled at the same time as the reds and we are always eagerly waiting to hear what our customers think of the next vintage.

Malolactic fermentation

Some wines undergo a secondary fermentation to soften the acid. Malic acid is transformed into lactic acid during this process. Our Verdelho is a good example of a wine that shows malic acid – a crisp, bright finish on the wine. Whereas the barrel ferment Chardonnay goes through partial malolactic fermentation so the acid is softer like milk acid giving the wine a broader, richer mouthfeel. All our red wines go through malolactic fermentation.

The Patience of Winemaking

The unwooded wines will be bottled in a short few months and ready for sale this winter.  The Verdelho and both the Rosé wines fall into this category. The reds and the barrel ferment Chardonnay will not be bottled until early next year. They spend 9-12 months in oak – a mixture of new and older barrels depending on the style we are looking for. So now we wait!