Our story part 2

This post will be about the physical characteristics of our vineyard. Our soil types are mostly Sand over Clay and vary in depth from about 20cm of sand up to over 1 m. We also have some small areas of heavy reactive clays. As I said earlier we have a large number of different varieties approx. 33% of our production is Shiraz. We also have significant plantings of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Most of our vines are now being planted on a variety of rootstock (depending on soil type and end use of the grapes) however nearly 50% of our vines are still on their own roots. As I also said earlier we make a small amount of our own wine but most of our production is sold to wineries that include Yalumba, Peter Lehmann, Barossa Valley Estate and Bethany wines (See my links for their web sites). We usually start picking our grapes early in February and finish in April. We normally pick about 400 tonnes of grapes each year. Of this we select about 6 tonnes of our best Shiraz to be made into our own wine. More on this next time.

Photo at right shows a member of our integrated pest management team, hard at work helping us to control insects in some of our 16 year old Shiraz.