2008 Vintage at Amietta in the Geelong Region

by Nicholas Clark
(Amietta in Geelong Wine Region)

Traditional winemaking techniques at Amietta

Vintage 2008 at Amietta Vineyard

If you ever ask a grape-growing winemaker how they determine when they’re going to pick their fruit, they’ll probably tell you a whole bunch of stuff about seed colour, or varietal flavour, or grape-sugar and acidity levels, or maybe even something about the point in time when the decomposing entrails of a sacrificial goat look like the portrait of the Mona Lisa. Well ….. maybe not …... But one way or another, they usually talk about subjective or measurable ways of assessing grape ripeness.

But do you want to know the real answer about how the picking date is chosen? WHEN THE PICKERS ARE AVAILABLE.

Here’s how it happens at Amietta. From veraison, (when the berries change colour ) we use good statistical methods, and once or twice a week we collect grape samples from the vineyard that are representative of the entire block of the particular variety.

We measure the acidity and grape-sugar levels, taste the juice and look at the seed colour and we put the information on a graph. We join the data points with a line and beyond the last data point we put a dotted line that tells us what the ripening trend is. We use this line to fix our preferred harvest date. Easy. But then you pick up the phone and call all your friends and family to see if they are available. “Nup!!”

So then you ring the local vineyard contractors. “You want 10 pickers on the 3rd of March? I can let you have 6 pickers including a bloke with one arm and a lady with pretty crook eyesight on the 15th. How’s that sound?”

Well actually it sounds like a freaking catastrophe, given that we intend to make premium quality dry wines with alcohol levels of 11.5% (Riesling) to 13.8%.

If we were intending to make dessert wines and ports, picking 12 days later than planned would be fine. BUT THAT’S NOT THE PLAN AND NO IT’S NOT FINE!

In climate-change vintages like we’ve had for the last 3 years, different varieties which previously had ripened two or three weeks apart are now ripening pretty much simultaneously. The harvest dates for our 7 grape varieties ‘should’ spread over about 6-8 weeks, but these days it’s taking about 2½ weeks. It was the same all over the district for everyone who hand picks their fruit. As a result, every available vineyard worker, relative or friend in the district was booked up with no gaps in their booking sheet. In the vineyard, the difference between just-perfect, over-ripe and completely stuffed can be less than 7 days when the weather is very warm.

This year, when vintage coincided with school holidays (so friends and family were all away) our blood pressure and grape-sugar levels would have been excessively high if we hadn’t managed to get hold of a contract crew of workers from a hydroponic nursery. In the calm, controlled world of hydroponics, everything does happen according to a predictable schedule. Which meant they were able to tell us when we could ‘borrow’ a crew of their workers. Thanks to them, each of our 7 grape varieties were picked on the precise day that we’d selected as being the optimum.

Hoo-bloody-ray. A perfect harvest. Perfect numbers. Perfect flavours. Perfect seed colours. And we didn’t have to look at the goat entrails once!