Harvest is usually mid March to April. All fruit is hand harvested using pickers from the Redesdale district.
The crusher is a Zambelli 6 tonne/hr. roller crusher/destemmer which has a very gentle action on the fruit. The must is then pumped to small 1.1 tonne fermenters and immediately innoculated with specially selected wine yeast - no sulphur is added in any of these winemaking processes.
Fermentation usually takes 6 - 8 days during which time the juice is pumped over the skins 2 - 3 times daily for gentle extraction of colour and flavour.
After fermentation the juice (wine) is pumped off and the skins are pressed in a small 300 Lt Vaslin press.
After some weeks settling in tank the wine is the racked off the gross lees and placed into oak barrels. A mixture of American and French oak is used.
The wine remains in barrel where it undergoes a natural malo-lactic fermentation in the spring when it warms up a little. After this is complete the wine is removed from the barrel and a small amount of sulphur dioxide is added - and then is returned to barrel.
Some 18 months after the harvest the wine is bottled at our winery by Portavin contract bottlers.
