August Wrap-up

August is a fairly quiet month around the farm. Most of the pruning has been done and the winter spraying of weeds and pests, mainly vine scale, completed in the vineyards. Repairs to netting have been made, trellis wires tightened and stays reset if necessary. All is about ready for budburst in spring .

This winter has been particularly cold (for us) and windy with a couple of frosts already. We have also had plenty of rain.

The wind brought down a few trees over the boundary fences so this was a good opportunity to not only repair this damage but upgrade much of the fencing in general.

Working with four strands of high tensile barbed wire is always fun. It gets you when you least expect it. After a week you look like you have been in a war zone.

Winter frosts kill of most of the native pasture and the cows tend to put pressure on the fencing looking for "greener grass" next door. The improved fences plus back up electric fences in critical areas will hopefully keep them home.

Our Semillon is still in the tank. We had hoped to bottle by now but professional tests showed that while the free SO2 is on the mark, pH is a little low and TA high. This is a result of our early picking. Nothing much we can do about that with the limited technical facilities at this "Vin de Garage" establishment. Deacidification would be a bit of a nightmare to control well so we just have to hope that more tartrate will "fall out" of solution during the few more colder months we have left.

The Cabernet Sauvignon is still maturing in the tank with the oak staves still in place. I will give that a few more weeks. Free SO2, TA and pH are fine with this wine. The Pinot Noir is in the bottle. Unfortunately the rose' seems to have "gone to God". Am endeavoring to save it but such small batches are always in danger of being the victim of oxidation.

Plans for our trip to the USA are almost complete.

Flying from Sydney to Sioux Falls, SD via LAX and Denver with no stopovers will be a bit tiring (23 hours all up) but we have done it a few times before and in my opinion it is better to get it over and done with.

So hopefully the next post will come from the American mid west.