Noble News
Tuesday, 22 June, 2004
Cowlin Wines
...from Cowlin Wines.
Autumn is nature’s way of making us pause – to reflect on the past season and plan for the new one.
Reflecting on the 2004 harvest...
The average rainfall for the area was about 16% lower than the long-term average. Although we did have good rainfall in August, the rest of the year was very dry. This however, did result in minimal mildew infections in the vineyard.
There was widespread evidence of uneven ripening in most varieties with Shiraz being the worst affected. This was probably due to the cold snap we experienced during budburst (which was 10 – 17 days later than usual) and the milder 2003 winter.
In order to reduce the yield to 7 tons per hectare to improve the quality of the wine, we had to drop more green bunches than usual. The result was that in some vineyards we had to go through 3 times to harvest all the grapes. Everything possible was done to ensure that the grapes were phenolically ripe when harvested.
Harvesting was 10 – 30 days later on the late-ripening cultivars. The entire harvest was done in the early morning and by hand. The problem of uneven ripening seen this harvest was neutralized by the use of our new sorting table where green berries, leaves and stems were removed by hand before the grapes were pumped into tanks for fermentation.
The outstanding ripening conditions experienced produced good acid and pH. Smaller berries, together with our excellent terroir can only produce truly fine wines. After all, good wines are made in the vineyard.
Newsflash!
Our Cabernet Sauvignon 2000 was awarded a Silver medal at the 2004 Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show. Out of 116 Cabernet Sauvignon entrants, 3 were awarded Gold medals and only 4 earned Silver medals.