But when you sit around with the Chalmers Girls you are very likely drinking a white or a rose. Ok there are some light reds that might come out a bit later in the night.

So I had been drinking mostly reds up to meeting them, having lived in McLaren Vale the last 6 years, and found myself in the minority.

During #bucketwine project we would be tasting unfinished reds and the Girls would say ‘see this is how I want to drink my red.’

‘But its not finished’ I would say.

After Malo-lactic fermentation was complete with these wines, and they were bottled, I would get reminded that some of the reds were so much more alive, vibrant and fresh before the Malo.

When Chalmers did a side project in 2011 called St Marty’s Vino Nuovo, an unfiltered and un-malo’d Heathcote Nero d’Avola) it was clear to them that there is a place for these wines. Also the stability of them seems not to much to worry about since St Marty is still drinking ok 5 years later.

So during the #bucketwine project there were a few reds that looked better than others before malo and that has a lot to do with the natural acidity and balance of those wines and could change season to season.

Now we are in the 2016 vintage and we are leaning over a freshly pressed Schioppettino. As always we are all discussing the wine and its future in the Australian wine industry, Chalmers girls making the big calls ‘this variety could be the next big thing,’ ‘its got every thing,’ and ‘planted in the right site it’s a winner.’

And I’m standing there thinking I can’t agree more its bloody delicious and has so much to offer.

As we stand in our shed (the winery) and we are getting excited about taking over the world one bottle of schioppettino at a time, there it is the by now famous question ‘should we just sulphur it now? Its bloody delicious who wouldn’t want to drink this?’

Ok, hang on, I can hear myself say before the sulphur gets tipped in, its really nice and I see what you are saying freshness/vibrancy, but I think it will be great after going through malo and we will still keep those characters and have a bit more red-winey completeness (is that even a thing, red winey?) .

It wouldn’t be project wine if we were just making stock standard stuff so right there and than hanging over a little tank we made the No Malo versus The Malo project and hope to answer some questions and get some confirmation about this subject.

Can’t wait to hear what the people think about the wines tasted side by side.

Bart.

Grape vines are categorised into varieties, recognisable by distinct DNA from each other.  Branches of the Vitis Vinifera family.  But clones are a bit more mysterious.  From generations of anecdotal evidence, and some scientific viticultural and sensory research, they are certainly recognisable from one another.  But exactly the genetic differences are hard to pin down.

I’m not a scientist.  I’m not even a qualified viticulturist or winemaker.  But I can tell you that the inter-clonal individualities within grape varieties are massive distinguishing features in vine and fruit characteristics.  Until recently I couldn’t tell you so much about the oenological effect.  But in 2016 in the Chalmers Merbein winery I got to undertake a little pet project I’d been gunning for for some time. I love Aglianico.  Always have.  And despite the fact that we have had four different clones in the vineyard for more than 15 years we have always made wine from just one clone based on the perceived superiority of the grapes in flavour and maturity analysis.  But what of the other three clones?

So in 2016 Bart, Tennille and I, along with Sandro Mosele who was up visiting us on the day, harvested a couple hundred kilos each of the four different clones from our nursery source block in Merbein on 7th March – which, when you consider it was one of the earliest vintages ever and harvest began in mid January, is very late in the season.  Two clones were originating from the Taurasi region in Campania (VCR23 and MAT3) and two originating from Vulture, Basilicata (VCR11 and MAT2).  My humble opinion at that point, based on the wines I’d seen to date in Australia and Italy, was that Taurasi wines were more red fruited while Vulture were more blue.  Nothing scientific.  Just a vibe.  But who knows what the differences would be when they were grown side by side, in controlled conditions where they were all treated exactly the same in the growing season, and in the winery.  The four clones – MAT 2 and VCR 11 from Vulture and MAT 3 and VCR23 from Taurasi, were all harvested on the same day, by hand, destemmed and fermented using wild yeasts for about 22 days before pressing.  Malo was natural and went through in less than a month.  Wines were then sulphured and let to rest in 100 litre vessels for a few months and bottled on 5th September 2016.

The results?  In our opinion the 2 VCR clones are the superior clones.  More complex and complete wines.  The Vivai Cooperativi Rauscedo process for selecting and registering a clone is extremely rigorous and includes over a decade of testing in the field and winery.  The evidence of this became more clear after our trials in this project. The Matura clones were interesting, more rustic, less complex.  But the Vulture and Taurasi origins of the clones were evident.  The fact that these Aglianco vines had evolved in their distinct regions was clear – they were different, but the clones from the same regions had detectable similarities.  Vulture in general are more perfumed and pretty, Taurasi more savoury and structured.

What an interesting project!  You’ll have to taste for yourself to see the results.  But I feel like this little exercise has justified my reference to clones when talking about wines.  They do make a significant difference.  They really do play an important part in defining the wine that results.  Does it matter to the consumer in the end?  Not sure.  But I find the whole thing fascinating.

Three cheers for Aglianico!

At Chalmers we love a new project as much as we love teaming up with good people.

Sydney independent retailer Oak Barrel and #bucketwine have been friends for a couple of years now.  Lucky us!  What a great CBD venue for sourcing small production vino, craft beers, and generally booze of good quality and interest.  After holding our 2014 Sydney #bucketwine vintage tasting and sale there last year, I got chatting with wine buyer Julian about custom making some #bucketwine for Oak Barrel in 2015.  Julian loved the idea.

Our family has a serious love for southern Italian varieties.  First of all they suit our climate and lifestyle, but what they also offer are distinctly savoury characters in both whites and reds that we find particularly appealing.  They naturally produce the kind of wines that we seek to fill our glasses with, and that we encourage others to fill their glasses with as well.  The shelves and fridges at Oak Barrel are full of these styles of wine.

For the collaboration I suggested crafting two wines, like twins; identical in every way, except for the winemaking.  What fuelled the idea even more was the anticipation of the project and the two resulting wines opening up some pretty exciting discussion i.e. likes, dislikes, strengths, preferences and drinkability.  It’s not everyday consumers get the opportunity to taste this kind of a ‘side-by-side’ comparison.  Even though this does go on in many wineries around the world often the results are blended after trials due to trial volumes etc.  Exciting stuff – and just the type of project we love at #bucketwine HQ.

Why the names?  There seemed to be an Alice in Wonderland theme emerging at Oak Barrel this year, so we ran with it.  The twins of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through a Looking Glass’ Tweedledum and Tweedledee are far and wide known as characters that cross Alice in Wonderlands path.  We like this and it completely relates to the wines…

Vintage in Mildura came along and we picked a selection of three southern Italian white varieties we are super passionate about; Vermentino, Fiano and Greco, for the project. The two wines would be the same blend make up and both co-fermented, only one was crushed and pressed of its skins immediately and fermented dry (Tweedledum), and the other crushed and left entirely on its skins until fermented dry (Tweedledee).  Both wines were fermented using wild yeasts as with all our wines, and had no additions apart from sulphur at bottling.  Not adding any acid in a region like Murray Darling is almost unheard of.  This is where we place huge importance on varietal characteristics and picking times to retain natural acidity and freshness in our hot dry climate.  The below forecast is from a heatwave that occurred the week after the grapes were picked for this project.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee have now taken their journey to Oak Barrel ready for the keen, curious and thirsty folk in Sydney to get involved. Small volumes of both the wines are now available in store and if you get a chance to try them – we are keen to hear your thoughts. Use the #bucketwine hashtag so we can track down your feedback, or where Tweedledum and Tweedledee have ended up.

Enjoy!

See more about our Chalmers range of Italian varietals here.

Later the next morning, a text message along the lines of… “Hi Tennille, Rebecca here from Cohen Cellars in East Melbourne, I’ve got a random proposal for you…. Wondering if Chalmers want to do a Pop-Up at my bar for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Make some #bucketwine for it, you guys come along and we’ll serve them together with some Chalmers wine. Think of it like a Chalmers takeover. Let me know what you think.” I simply replied ‘Yes!”

Crazy! What are the chances?

With our keen reaction, Rebecca quickly locked in the event.

Since then the awesome Alquimie magazine has written #bucketwine Bonanza up as one of the top 4 wine experiences of the 2015 #MFWF.  Amazing.

Now here we are in March with the 2015 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival well underway and our event #bucketwine Bonanza is just around the corner. We took the initial idea back to just a one day event as time is poor in the middle of vintage, and this Thursday 12th March, we’ll drive down to Melbourne with a car boot full to the brim with some very exciting little #bucketwines on board.

This event has given us the opportunity to continue making super small batch, fun wines in the search for a great new blend, variety or wine style for people to try, and hopefully love. Without giving too many secrets away, we’ve made a NE Italy meets NW Italy co-fermented white blend which we think is a cracker; a white variety which has been around for a while but not many people have gotten on board with yet; a rosato from one of our favourite varieties to make rose from; a ‘nuovo’ or ‘new wine’ red from a Southern Italian classic; we’ll take a look at some of last years super rare variety #bucketwine reds, and a whole heap more. You will have to join us at the event to find out what they are, taste the wines, chew the fat and pick your favourite!

To buy tickets visit the #bucketwine Bonanza event page on the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival website here.

Thanks to Rebecca and Cohen Cellars for inviting us to be a part of the MFWF and her great little wine bar, and to everyone else, we hope to see you there!

Who knows, there might even be another one of our #winthebooze competitions.

Hope to see you all there…

Ciao,

Tennille

Each year in March the local Mildura arm of the internationally recognised food movement group Slow Food hold a seriously epic and memorable dinner ‘Festa della Vendemmia’.  This celebration of the vintage/harvest celebrates everything that Slow Food represents; good, fair and clean food, local, and seasonal produce, community awareness and involvement, and getting consumers to think about where their food comes from.   This dinner is held at a stunning property just outside of Mildura owned by the Garreffa family, local producers of quality fresh and dried fruits.  Long tables are set up under high pergolas of Red Globe table grapes, ripe for the picking.  The tables are filled with courses of fresh, regional fair and the atmosphere is abuzz with like-minded diners enjoying the last of the balmy Mildura nights of the season.  It truly is an amazing event.

This year we have had the pleasure of working with Slow Food Mildura in creating a wine specially for the dinner.  After tasting the fruit from various varieties in our Chalmers Merbein vineyard during January and discussing with Brad Fyfe, local Slow Food representative, together we decided to make a rosato (rose) made from Montepulciano.  This Italian red grape variety is grown throughout central, and mainland Southern Italy and is well suited to our warmer wine growing regions in Australia.

Very simply as with all our #bucketwines, this wine has been hand made with minimal input but a lot of love, care and enthusiasm. The fruit was picked, crushed and left to macerate on it skins for a day to extract colour, pressed into a glass demijohn and left to ferment naturally with wild yeasts.  Fermentation took almost three weeks and we will be bottling it tomorrow ready for the thirsty guests this Saturday.  This wine has seen no additions, and is filtered only by natural settling, so what you see is what you see is what you get!

There is something very cool about the idea of sitting amongst a group of 200 people, all drinking a wine that was on the vine just a month ago.  It’s working together with great people and organisations on projects like this that makes us love what we do.

Want to join in on the fun? Buy tickets here.

North eastern Italy with it’s areas of white stony soils in the far east, high altitude in the sub-alpine valleys of the north, generally high annual rainfall and humid summers in the lower lying areas seems a long way from inland Australia in terms of terroir.  And it is.  But we found that these North Eastern Italian varieties thrive in our Merbein vineyard and make some pretty cracking wines without the need for diddling about in the winemaking process.

Many of them seem to love the heat (although not all) and as long as they are sheltered from the harsh sun by the canopy, and not let to dry out too much, they can be harvested early to make low alcohol, fresh wine styles in the harsh Aussie summers.  Often in their homeland these varieties can be lean and green in cooler seasons so the warm climates are a good option for achieving more fruity styles without being overripe.

The red grapes of this area seem to be softer and more plush than the classic tannic/acidic profile of the more famous Italian red grapes and many of the whites have lovely aromatics and bright fruit profiles.  When these aspects are combined with the freshness from early harvest and the ripeness from the hot climate – delicious wine ensues!

So from the success of a number of #bucketwines from these NE Italian grapes we have stepped the R&D up a notch.  Today we are planting a 1.3Ha patch made up of six different varieties at our Heathcote vineyard in the northern part of the GI on the Mt Camel Range.

The winners are:  Garganega from the Veneto, Nosiola from Trentino, Malvasia Istriana from Friuli in the whites and Pavana from Trentino & Veneto, Schioppettino and Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso from Friuli in the reds.

It will take a couple of seasons to see any grapes from this new block but we are excited to make some wines from Heathcote where the warm summers are slightly less ferocious and the rainfall is about double.  Should be very interesting!  I’m sure there will be a few adventurous winemakers interested in getting their hands on some of these grapes too.

#bucketwine research outcomes in action – watch this space…

Cheers, Kim

*typo alert: schioppettino mis-spelt on the tag in the image.

Just for fun we also ran a competition to give away a mixed 6 pack of 2014 #bucketwine to the person who could guess our blind mystery wine.  Guesses were tweeted with #winthebooze and, given we have over 40 varieties across 2 sites, there were a few super smart palates out there who got very close to the mark with this challenge.

We can now reveal the mystery #bucketwine:

It was in fact the wine that spawned the #bucketwine project.  A 2012 Heathcote fiano whole berry ferment which was topped up with vermentino juice and included just 5 berries of moscato giallo.  Roughly 90% fiano, 9.9% vermentino, 0.1% moscato giallo.  Fermented in the pump shed at Heathcote in a spring water bottle (needless to say we didn’t get our deposit back on this one…).  It was kept in the fermentation vessel for 2 months on skins and lees.  Aged for a further 2 months in demijohn then bottled with minimal sulphur.

We can announce that the winner of the competition was Jack from The Tasting Table who guessed 2012 Heathcote Fiano skin contact and thought it may have been made in an egg/amphora.  Funnily enough when Bart and I made this wine we were trying to probe the amphora concept by seeing if we could create the same texture and characteristics in the wine by doing the same methods but in a more neutral vessel.  I guess by Jack’s response we may have achieved the ‘amphora’ effect in the spring water bottle after all.

There were numerous well thought out entries in this challenge and some very well deserved honourable mentions to be awarded…

Simon from Bar Lourinha guessed 2012 Heathcote Vemrentino 3 months on skins.  Very close!

And Liam from Athletes of Wine guessed all three varieties correctly but weighted in the wrong order, moscato giallo, vermentino, fiano.  And although he had the wrong vintage (2013) did have the correct region and winemaking style as well.  Pretty smart palates out there!

Overall people thought the mystery wine was a good drink.  It’s nice to know that the #bucketwine project already has a little gem in the ‘museum’ from the original vintage.

Thanks to everyone who joined in our silly game and got on the bandwagon to #winthebooze.  We had a blast.

Cheers, Kim

Malbec World Day (MWD) is celebrated globally on the 17th April each year, and very simply is a day highlighting the many reasons Malbec is such a brilliant variety right from the vineyards to the wineglass.  Our Arturo Heathcote Malbec was invited to be a part of the Gauchito Gil Malbec event in Melbourne this April, a day aimed at both trade and consumers, organised by Bottle Shop Concepts (thanks Dan Sims) with ample empanadas and tango dancing to keep the punters entertained.  A great day was had by all.

During the #bucketwine vintage, we are in the vineyard every morning looking, tasting and making decisions on harvest times and dates, potential wine making styles and options for blends.  We love what we do!  Sometimes we can even get a bit carried away as the opportunities are endless with so many varieties we have in the vineyard.  So, when planning the WMD celebrations, I thought that the idea of making a wine especially for the day was a great idea.  The decision was a quick one with the malbec fruit at perfect ripeness to make a rose – or ‘rosado’, so we picked the fruit that afternoon and the journey of the #bucketwine Malbec Rosado began….

1.  Pretty, perfect, malbec bunches ripe for the picking.

2.  Enough fruit to make about 3 dozen bottles!

3.  The man of Malbec himself – Big Bruce – on quality control.

4.  The non-glamourous part of the wine industry!  Stained hands, daggy farmer mode clothes…

5.  Cold soaked crushed fruit, pressed, and wild fermentation begins.

6.  Almost dry and looking the goods!

7.  After about 3 weeks, the dry wine is cold stabilised and racked, ready for alcohol tests.

8. Bottled, labelled, and ready for Gauchito Gil celebrations.

9. Boxed up #bucketwine ready for the trip to Melbourne.

10. Malbec tasting table ready to go.

11. Two fine ladies – Julie and Shelley loving all things Malbec.

12.  Happiness is….. Mad keen Malbec man Nav of Matchbox wines ripping into his new favourite rosado…

The wine was a huge success on the day, with lots of punters thinking we were either mad or very clever making a wine exclusively for the day.  “Only 3 dozen made” they all said ….. but how can we buy some? I think we’ll have to make a bit more next year.  Who knows…. there might even be an Arturo Malbec Rosado one day…..

Happy drinking…

Tennille

Summer 2013/2014 was hot.  There were 41 days over 35 degrees celsius during the season (dec-jan), almost half of them were over 40°C and there were a couple of extended heat waves averaging 45°C daily max temperatures with very high overnight lows. Here’s a comparison with the long term averages for the region.

Month          Mean Maximum Temp       Long Term Average 

Dec 2013                                       32.0°C                                            30.1°C

Jan 2014                                       35.7 °C                                            32.3°C

Feb 2014                                      33.5 °C                                            31.6°C

Mar 2014                                     30.8°C                                            28.3°C

The effect this has on the grapes is that they end up with low total acidity and high pH.  This kind of extreme heat also shuts down the vine – as it tries to conserve it’s energy for survival – and so the sugar ripening process in the grapes can stop.  Traditional wisdom would say that these kind of vintages can’t make great wines.

We found out otherwise.  In these conditions it was  great to see and work with varieties that stand up to the heat, even thrive in it – like greco, garganega and lambrusco maestri.  Other less resilient grapes had to be harvested earlier to capture freshness, like nosiola, malvasia istriana and barbera.

Overall it was fantastic to see that we could still make great wines in these harsh conditions. When you work with the season, allowing it to show it’s unique characters, and adapt winemaking to suit the year, remarkable things can happen.  Vibrant, fresh wines can prevail – amazingly without the need for any additions.

I have learned a lot from this vintage, that’s for sure.  I hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised by #bucketwine 2014.

Cheers, Bart

This vintage we invited a group of Sommelier’s from top Melbourne restaurant group Grossi, for their own taste of the Mildura #bucketwine experience.  After what seemed like an eternity of scorching hot days and endless heatwaves during the beginning of vintage, in mid February for their arrival we were blessed with a cool change and had two blue sky days, topped off with a nice breeze, and temperatures that didn’t crack 30 degrees.  Relief!