The vintage at Seppeltsfield started on Monday, Feb 20th and
that means we’ll be flat out working for the next 7-8 weeks, 12h a day or
night, 7 days a week. Maybe if we’re not too busy we’ll have a shift off but quite
frankly that’s unlikely.
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| Flying over Barossa |
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| Chateau Tanunda Winery |
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| Welcome to Seppeltsfield |
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| Morning glory |
Honestly, this is hard work here! I cannot imagine how this
was done in the earlier days, the men working there must have been made out of
steel. Nowadays the work we do is peanuts compared to what it used to be about
100 odd years ago. Grapes were crushed using your feet and probably some help
of machinery, after which the must (read: crushed grapes with skins) was
wheelbarrowed down to the fermentation tanks. After the fermentation process
finished, everything that could be run down to the presses with the help of
gravity, was flushed down wooden channels (hence the name gravity flow winery),
the rest again shoveled out of the tanks and wheeled down into the presses to
get the most juice out from the skins. After that, maturation in oak barrels,
blending and finally when the winemaker decided, bottling. Today it’s still a very
special place, not only here in Barossa Valley but also in larger scale. For example
there are not many wineries left in the world (well there weren’t a lot of
places to start with) that still have a working gravity flow cellar. So every
now and then other winemakers or people learning to be a winemaker and working
elsewhere pop in to see this place. Also on daily basis there are 2-3 winery
tours that take people through the premises and enable them to see how this
place operates. Especially now when winemaking is running on full speed. However
for the past 4 years since Seppeltsfield has new ownership, a lot has improved.
The fermentation tanks that are made out of concrete and used to be covered
with wax, are now being covered with stainless steel (so no tank waxing is
involved), crushing, pumping over, pressing, racking is all being done with the
help of machinery. Plenty of money has been invested to make this hard work a
lot easier, and frankly quicker! And it has paid off! I guess a good evidence
for this is that our chief winemaker Fiona Donald was chosen the 2012 winemaker
of the year in Barossa.
So why is this work so hard?! Firstly because it’s physical
work. A lot of it involves moving the pumps, the big heavy hoses, staying on
the feet the whole day long, constantly being active and doing something,
anything, everything. It took a week for the body to get used to being „punished“
12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Let alone the fact that for the first week I
worked at nightshift, from 7pm to 7am. The first week also had it’s casualties –
one guy slipped from the ladder and though landed on his hands, managed to
brake one small bone in his wrist. Therefore some positions were changed and I
was moved to dayshift with the aim of also teaching me other jobs – operating the
press, the crusher so that I could be a back-up person just in case.
What makes it also hard is the lack of sleep. Despite the
fact the 6-7 hours sleep a day should be sufficent, my body does not manage to
regain itself. So that is also why I asked yesterday (Thursday Mar 8th) off. A long
sleep, easy relaxing day is all you need to get back on tracks. And a little
visit to a masseuse doesn’t hurt either. J
My vintage actually started two days before I started at
Seppeltsfield, on Saturday, Feb 18th when I went along with Annika and Merli to
the vineyard where they got work a day before. The work grapepicking, by hand.
As this is where the vintage really starts, I thought I’d go along with the
girls and ask the winery owner if they needed an extra pair of hands, just to
help out and see how it’s done. Picking is all about being quick. To cut the
long story short, the workday lasted from 7am till noon, we picked about 4tons
of tempranillo grapes and as I just offered to help out, never considering they’d
need to pay me, the friendly owners of the winery thanked me and the girls with
some of their wines. What more can you ask for. J
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| Handpicking at Tscharke's Place |
Now what and how are
we operating here at Seppeltsfield. First of all you need grapes obviously. As
I said earlier, I went along to witness and experience handpicking, yet most of
the grapes these days are machine harvested. The reason is obvious – less timeconsuming,
less amount of people needed and what’s most important the picking can easily
be done during nighttime when it’s cooler! Grapes, when they are ripe, do not
like being handled in hot weather, their skins break easier, and even before
they reach the crushing. Not good! That’s why the work of picking usually
starts early or very early in the morning. Then it’s delivery! Truckfuls pulling up at the crusher
every now and then, smaller ones, bigger ones and then there was a stupid BIG
one! It took him almost 1 hour to back the trailer up to the crusher. It was just too long and too big for us. J
Followed by crushing!
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| Incoming grapes |
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| Our small and mighty crusher with John making sure the stems are cleared off |
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| Miranda, nightshift winemaker making sure we have everything in order |
And filling the fermentation tanks.
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| Shannon in charge |
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| Ups, got juiced :) |
After which our main work starts – pumpovers and chillings
to allow the juice to get more skin contact (i.e. flavours, colour, natural
grape goodness), plungings (i.e. to mix the skins and juice differently than
pumping over or after pumpovers when we add some additives) and additions of
various additives (acids, tannins etc).
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| Pumpover |
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| Got visitors - Annika, me, Merli |
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| That cap was thick! |
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| That's even thicker! |
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| Juicing the cap for pressing |
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| Plunging |
Next step, after 4-6 days in the tanks the juice will be pressed (i.e.
separating the juice from the skins). Most of the times successful, sometimes
not so succesful. This specific spillage during our first week was about 3700
litres. Not good!
And then it’s time for pumping the juice into other tanks
for storage, where also some racking is done in order to clarify the wine and separate
the lees (read: residue) from the juice. As the juice continues its
fermentation there, so whatever you might get one day for tasting might be a
different kind of product some days later. And if the half product (sometimes it might actually end up
straight in a bottle, though rarely) we’ve created is good and the potential
customers like it, they buy it and send some trucks to collect the goodies. On
some occasions the juice is kept for Seppeltsfield own label production,
maturation and oaking. Last week me and Nick were in charge of our level where
some real good wine was fermenting. As Fiona the winemaker pointed out, we did
a good job keeping it that way, so who knows, maybe a 2012 vintage
Seppeltsfield Shiraz or Cabernet Savignon, or a blend of those two will have
been made by me. J
So this is what we do here. As I said, it’s not easy getting
this good wine into a bottle and have everyone enjoy it, yet it’s interesting, rewarding
and most of all good fun! J
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