Nearly there ...

With the exception of Hoops’ extended maceration ferments we are close to wrapping up vintage 2011 here at RedHeads and it has certainly been an interesting one.

A cold, wet and late start exploded into sunshine and warmth and although the weather has turned back again now the meat of the work was done whilst basking in the sunshine (and moonlight), the only way to do it really.

There were a few problems along the way requiring some quick thinking and often instant reactions. These though are the things we come to expect during vintage time. You’d never hear of any producer having a faultless vintage and if you did you’d have to question how much they might have indulged themselves in last years barrels.

From fork-lifts warping and snapping under pressure and must pumps exploding to simply having to go fishing for a dip-stick in an open fermenter these kind of events can often be the highlights of a vintage and this year was no exception.

2011 was also a bit of a global vintage for us, mixed in with our resident RedHeads were the likes of Josipa from Mostar, Jane from London, Kurt from Queensland, Rob from Sydney (we’ll ignore the fact he was raised in Adelaide) and so on, everyone bringing their knowledge and doing their bit to get us through.

Now most of the wine is tucked away sleeping in oak and as soon as Hoops’ give us the word we’ll get his hanger-on through the press and into barrel and bang the bung into the 2011 vintage.

A small moment of reflection ...

A small moment of reflection now things have slowed a little as the grapes have stopped coming in. Thanks to Easter and Anzac Day all rolling into one long long weekend recent times in the winery have been a bit hectic.

Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday to be specific were manic, by far the busiest three days of vintage. Grapes coming in from all over, great parcels of finally ripe Cabernet Sauvignon from the hills (that felt like we’d been waiting forever for), some more beautiful looking hand picked Grenache and so on and so on. Three days of non-stop action, just how we like it. Early starts and going well into dark, the music was blaring and the winery was jumping.

The 2011 vintage playlist has been crafted throughout recent weeks to suit all tastes, we’re talking the likes of Rihanna to the great Pink Floyd, if you like it you add it to the list and wait for the inevitable bashing and abuse when it starts to play, no matter, as long as it’s playing loud the work won’t stop.

Now we wait for the final ferments, pressing, racking and cleaning, still plenty to be done.

Meanwhile on the next hill over …

At Longwood to see the ‘Godfather’ Phil Christiansen who is bringing in a few parcels of great looking Shiraz from down by the coast. Processing doesn’t take long at Longwood, gravity plays a major part in the procedure. Hard to know where he is going to put it though, the shed is already looking pretty full. And he hasn’t even started using his bright pink bins yet!

Further up the hill and we find plenty is going on at Pieri Wines too. Vintage is a little late this year as we all know and with his dad Mario in charge of the vineyards and growing more and more impatient Andrew is having to fight to keep his grapes on the vine.

Those that have come off so far are looking good though. A new batch is on the drying table for his signature Amarone styled Azzardo and some dry fermenters are working there way to the press that is working so hard it is starting to warp, treats the grapes like VIPs though.

He who runs in the cellar …

A day of discovery and philosophy in the winery, I’d find it hard to think of a better place for it.

First, Jess finds Fred. Missing for 12 months and presumed dead Fred was discovered hiding at the very back of the barrel shed. To be fair he was very well camouflaged due to the fact that he is himself a barrel.  A barrel of Grenache to be more precise, lost due to mislabelling in a stack of Shiraz. After intense forensic testing the handwriting on Fred is deemed to belong to Pieri so the next case of Pale Ale is on him.

We're not losing him again - Fred is clearly marked

You wouldn’t think it by looking at him but Mr. Brill likes to move around the winery at speed, from barrel storage to fermenters to the press Kurt is some what of a blur. The problem is people running in wineries normally means something bad, so everyone stops to see what’s going on. ‘Kurt save the running for when something bad happens!’ Kurt ‘Kurfucious’ Brill has realised the error of his ways and even gave us this nugget of wisdom … ‘He who runs in the cellar covers little ground.’

Blink and you'll miss him - Kurfucious is on the move

Sunshine, Shiraz and sugar levels

Hoops is all a buzz today, the sun is shining and he has just started crushing some great looking Shiraz grapes he’s sourced locally for his 2011 La Curio.

It’s one of his favourite blocks that he goes back to every year because it never lets him down. With the amount of Botrytis we’re seeing this vintage it seems his faith in this small parcel from 70 year old vines is justified. Looks great!!

And then the moment we’ve all been waiting for, after getting the fruit crushed and into an open-topped fermenter a quick check of the sugar levels shows us we’ve finally got our first 15+ degrees Baumé parcel of the vintage.

For a vintage looking to be a bit low on the sugar front this is some great news. McLaren Vale doesn’t let you down!

Adieu Lady Jane.

Recently RedHeads said a sad farewell to our very own Lady Jane. Jane Parkinson, who has been part of the team (and our voice on the blog) since the New Year took the long flight home to the UK earlier in the week to get back to life as one of the world’s top wine journalists. She will be sorely missed.

Before Jane left us though she, in true RedHeads fashion, got to work on crafting her very own Aussie drop. With a 2-ton open-topped fermenter and some top draw locally sourced fruit at her disposal Jane (with a bit of help from our resident experts) set about creating the Lady Jane Shiraz.

 Yesterday due to some re-organising in the storage shed, the Lady Jane 2011 was tucked away for a well-deserved French oak slumber. It will emerge again in approx 12 months and we hope the Lady herself will return to indulge us in the fruits of her labour, early signs point to it being a cracker!!

Cheers Jane.

Exotic creatures

Not just one but two exotic-looking creatures arrived at RedHeads last week.

One.....

.... Two

Even though the first one, Kurt Brill (whose catchphrase “sensational” is catching on like wildfire throughout the winery), has been described by a fellow vintage worker as looking like a Miami porn star, his passion for RedHeads is so strong he's even written in his will that he wants his ashes to be spread here in McLaren Vale. Sensational!

Meanwhile the Bearded Dragon caused a bit of a stir with the ladies (unlike Kurt) when it was found lurking in one of the bins of Shiraz that came off McMurtrie Road. It nearly went head-first into the crusher but was rescued just in time and now takes up residence in RedHeads' cellar door.

The Bearded Dragon and Kurt weren't the only arrivals last week, we also had a couple of in-house guests. Dan Parrott, Direct Wines’ Australia and NZ Buyer, dropped in from his base in Melbourne to taste his way through a mountain of samples, and from the UK we welcomed Direct Wines’ Managing Director Simon McMurtrie, whose thoughts on RedHeads and the region can be seen on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/RedHeadsStudio

The harvest is so damn late this year that vintage volunteers are already starting to move on to their next commitments. So before the farewells started, we took a couple of Team 2011 pics in their V11 t-shirts last Thursday - see below.

At the end of last week, we said goodbye to Croatian Josipa Andrijanic (below with Andrew Pieri, left, and Adam Hooper, right), in a Friday evening send-off that ended in Studio Member Nat McMurtrie’s winemaking shed, as he finished off his yeast inoculation while everyone drank from his cellar, ate Chinese takeaway, listened to his slightly dodgy collection CD collection and played the odd round of darts.

So what does this week have in store? Apart from yet another party at the cellar door tonight (two more vintage workers are moving on), after another bout of rain last night, fruit's scheduled to come in thick and fast this week, so by Friday we reckon RedHeads is going to be cooking on gas.

Bogged, de-bogged and massaged

Remember how we mentioned earlier in the week that Steve Grimley was just getting to grips with his large machinery once again? Here’s the proof from yesterday that maybe he should stick to winemaking...

Of course, helpful guy that he is, Andrew was only too pleased to help move it this morning...

"Che rotoora dee pale!"

And eventually we were on our way....

So stressed was Andrew, vintage worker Josipa Andrajenic decided to put a smile back on Andrew’s face

 Which seems to have worked...

While the winemakers busied themselves with machinery, Seamus, our resident trader (at Fuse) decided to get his hands and crisp white shirt dirty with some punching down.

Freshly rejuvenated, Andrew turns to help Adam with a seemingly complicated piece of winemaking apparatus.

More success for Andrew - what day!

Meanwhile, Studio member Phil Christiansen, at his winery just down the road, proudly shows off his self-designed piece of equipment for dealing with the 200k grape cake after pressing. He's attached a car winch to the wall to lift it up - genius!

Too much attention on gadgets and gizmos? We need some more fruit to arrive. More Shiraz expected today, we hope...



The girls take the plunge

Public holidays mean nothing when vintage time comes around.

It’s now Sunday lunchtime and we’re all still here, geared up for more action. Not least Studio Member Adam, who’s waiting for a tonne of Primitivo grapes to arrive for his La Curio label, as we speak.

Meanwhile, our first batch of Shiraz, which got here on Friday, is happily fermenting away, and yesterday the hand plunging got underway.

Notice anything? That’s right, yesterday the back-breaking hand-plunging was left to the girls as winemaker Jess Hardy (left) and vintage worker Jane Parkinson threw themselves into it.

The only male seemingly interested in such activities being Steve Grimley’s youngest son, four-year old Alex, RedHeads’ next generation winemaker in the making.

With the 5 different tanks of Shiraz we’ve received so far, each has been inoculated with a different yeast to help encourage a plethora of Shiraz styles, and with the same diversity in mind, we’ve also put a lid on one of the vats too.

Wedged between a couple of these tanks is the (wine cooling) fridge plant, which we discovered last week has been the home of a rat, but no-one know how long for, just long enough so it can consume vast quantities of the pipes’ insulation foam.

Cue Macgyvieri* (Andrew Pieri’s V11 name) - Studio Member and RedHeads’ very own Mr Fixit. After a painstaking operation on the fridge plant’s piping yesterday, we all held our breath as we waited to see if the patient emerged this morning fully recovered.

Success!

Adam will be breathing a sigh of relief, La Curio is very dependent on this machine as Adam likes to expose his wines to cold-soaking (especially as the Primitivo will come in a little raisined this year, according to him), so keeping it extra cool for 5-6 days at a hopeful 3-4 degrees celsius will be ideal for him, especially as he believes the pips are a bit green, and so fermentation at a lower temperature should keep those green pip characters at bay.

Well, that’s the plan anyway – thankfully we have total faith in both Macgyvieri’s fixing skills and Adam’s deft winemaking skills...

*Macgyvieri is the merging of Macgyver, the American action-adventure television series with Pieri

Worth the wait...

The air at RedHeads Studio was filled first crush day excitement this morning, as we waited for V11 to get underway.

But before any of vintage happened, our morning began with a visit from the American Consulate who shared a coffee, and a bow and arrow competition, with Steve Grimley as they chatted about climate change, Virgin Wines' launch into the USA and as Steve put it profoundly "life in general".

Steve (second left) with Jock Harvey of Chalk Hill (far left) with our guests 

So as Steve hosted the official guest, the rest of us waited for the Shiraz to arrive, and everyone occupied themselves with a smile on their face, except Andrew who was charged with sorting out the site’s leaking effluent system.

But now IT’S HERE!

We were expecting 8 tonnes of Shiraz from a plot near Sellicks Beach, but we recieved 12 tonnes instead, and boy, does it look good (more on viticulturalist Adam Jacobs' view on why it looks so good over the weekend).

Meanwhile the RedHeads perma-team of Steve, Adam, Andrew and Jess were all on board to direct the crush, supported by three foreign workers, including Mitch Rhamdunnie, a stalwart RedHeads Studio vintage worker who’s come from Saudi Arabia but knows everyone here as though he was a local.

Built like a “brick sh*thouse” according to one Studio Member, and in true hard-man style, Mitch is about to get a tattoo across his chest reading Skin Deep to celebrate his new JV wine business with Studio Member Adam Hooper.

Perhaps more importantly, Mitch turns 40 on Tuesday and will be having a humdinger of a party in nearby town Willunga next weekend. Happy Birthday (in advance) Mitch!

More on the rest of the team soon.  Right now it’s time for beers, G&Ts, chips and dips, and maybe someone busting the odd move on the cellar door dancefloor, as we raise a glass to celebrate the thrills and spills of the next few weeks to come.

There's only one RedHeads, says Studio Member Nat McMurtrie...

Steve reminds himself how a forklift works after a year's hiatus

 

Studio Member Adam Hooper gets a spanner of a spanking from vintage worker Josipa Andrijanic between crushes

Vintage adrenalin and spanner spanking clearly wasn't enough for Adam or Josipa, so they decided to drag Studio Member Andrew into a compromising hose situation too 

Vintage is something to celebrate for our office workers too, as Deb Olivers shows here, who's so excited she busts a few nifty Flamenco moves

Winemaker Jess Hardy in her element

Studio Member Phil and vintage worker Mitch catch up with a beer after the end of the first day

The elusive vintage...

Vintage 2011 just doesn’t seem to want to happen here.

It’s been pushed so far back that Hoops thinks it’s the latest he’s ever seen, and this year it’s his 20^th vintage. Happy Anniversary Hoops! May all your Grenache, Sangiovese and Zinfandel wishes come true...

Sure, we’re impatient for the first crush, but we’ve still had a good couple of weeks – maybe the highlight being our pre-harvest party in honour of the shy fruit which we held at the Cellar Door, which is fast gaining itself a reputation as the place to have a rollicking good party in this area.

It happened two Sundays ago, and to really treat us all, Steve sacrificed one of his suckling Berkshires which live in the field behind the winery for the big day.

Once the dirty deed was done, and Momo, our hyperactive Jack Russell landed himself some macho red spots to go with his new masculine collar (which recently replaced his diamante-encrusted metrosexual one), we called on the expertise of local hero Mario Pieri, who can teach us all a thing or two about being in possession of a sharp knife and a vat of boiling water. But on this occasion it was to clean up the pig.

On the morning of the party, the hog was massaged lovingly in salt and olive oil, then wrapped tenderly in foil, and then, rather unlovingly, rammed into the centre of the cellar door pizza oven.

Hours later, and the pig looked like some advert warning you of the dangers of skin cancer and sunbathing... check out the arse on that!

The unsightly buttocks didn’t deter two our two Studio Member winemakers, Phil (left) and Andrew (right), from eschewing their responsibility of feeding the masses...

With the tunes ripping up the cellar door-cum-dance floor well into the night, the party went down a storm and RedHeads’ reputation as McLaren Vale’s home of a good time remains well and truly in tact.

Fast forward to today, and the winery has been gearing up for vintage, but after a burst of rain last night (4mls instead of 40mls as predicted thank god), it’s delayed by yet a few more days. And as we type it is hammering down outside too.

At least soemone got some action this week, though. Phil was lucky enough to see his first crush yesterday morning, and he was loving the dark colour and small size of the seven tonnes of Shiraz which were delivered early yesterday from Sellicks - one of the more coastal vineyard locations in McLaren Vale and nearly always one of the earliest to ripen.  

We hope to see some of it ourselves here very, very, very soon.....