2011 Semillon

Kintarla 2011 Semillon

Our 2011 Semillon and Verdelho is now available for order at the Kintarla website. We tried the Semillon last night and it is delicious. This wine is quite delicate at the moment but will age will and should develop for the next ten years or so. Young Semillon's are a very different drink to when they get a bit of age on them.

At the moment our Semillon is a very pale yellowish green in colour and the tastes which predominate for me are lime, pear and apple. It would go great with seafood or pork. As the wine ages the colour will darken to a deep golden hue. I'm not sure yet how the taste will mature but usually you start to get toasty vanilla and almost oak characters emerge.

Vintage 2011 - The Shiraz

The 2011 Shiraz Harvest

We ended up with 2.8 tonne of Shiraz this year. Last year we didn't get a crop due to too much rain and the year before (our first crop) we picked 1.8 tonne. We would have had more but the kangaroos and birds probably ate a tonne of fruit.

The urban myth is that one year in five is a good year in the Hunter. It turns out that this might be the year. Early on things were looking dodgy with a lot of rain but we haven't had as much during Jan and Feb as in previous years - I guess it is all up in Qld. This is a good thing. You don't want rain close to harvest. This is the first year that we haven't emptied the irrigation dam, so we were able to keep the drippers going up until picking.

But the ferments haven't finished yet - it wont be until then that we will get a real idea of the quality. One thing is certain, the 2011 Shiraz will be a much bigger wine than the 2009, the grapes were almost raisins by the time they came off so the flavours should be very intense. Of course the Shiraz needs to spend a year in oak prior to bottling so we wont be seeing that until 2012.

Kintarla - 2010 Shiraz RIP

Sultana's anyone?

We spent all Saturday dropping the shrivelled remains of our Shiraz crop. After a years work, it is pretty heart breaking to have to cut the grapes and leave them to rot on the ground.

You need to do this to stop fungal spores building up in the sticky mass of decaying grapes and to stop the vine wasting resources on trying to ripen the doomed crop. These resources are better spent on building carbohydrate reserves for next year.

So not only do you lose the crop but you have to waste time harvesting it anyway. The only good thing about being a farmer is that it gives you a good excuse to moan.

Bottling is still scheduled for late March, so it will be exciting to taste our first vintage (last years Shiraz and this years Verdelho). We plan on selling this via the new and improved Kintarla Web Site.