From vine to Bottle

So this was the bit everyone (yes you!!) was excited about...in fact it was the bit I was excited about too. How cool to spend 3 weeks in one of the top wine regions of the world learning to make wine. Well, it lived up to every expectation and more. The Barossa valley is stunning, a truly beautiful part of the world and I was lucky enough to not only have the best guide of the area...yes the one and only travel buddy Shelley, but also to be staying with Chris and Dennis Canute in their home and at Rusden winery. My time was pretty much split between two wineries: Rusden and Massena, both small, boutique and reliant on old fashioned manual labour - ie everything is done by hand! Within a few hours I realised that I was gonna learn more than I'd ever imagined and what with full on long hard days at the winery and even more educational conversations over dinner in the evening, plus wine tasting at the weekends (in addition of course to more decent bottles on a Tuesday night than I've ever had in my life!) and you begin to get a picture of how the three weeks panned out.

The guys at Massena and Rusden were excellent teachers and by the end of the stay I had helped in every part of the process completed during vintage: grape picking, crushing, pump over after pump over after pump over during fermentation, testing temperatures and alcohol levels, cleaning and filling barrels and even labeling bottles for export. My old science teachers would have been shocked and maybe proud that I can use some bits of lab equipment at least and my PE teacher would never recognise the upper body arm strength or muscles I now have!! One afternoon thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend (yes this is Barossa life!) I had the amazing opportunity to see first hand how Penfolds make their wine. kitted out with hard hat and bright yellow jacket I got to see the equipment and processes of one of the worlds largest and most successful wineries - the process is very similar but its amazing how little is done by hand and how much is done at the press of a button - rock on the small wineries!

So, if you get the chance try a bottle from one of the following.... leave it until the 2008 vintage is out and you'll have to contend with my hands and feet being apart of the good stuff (well....not exactly but you know what I mean!) and me talking about it endlessly :-)

http://www.rusdenwines.com.au/mos/
http://www.massena.com.au/wines/

Top two tips for other Barossa wines that you really shouldn't go through life without trying:

1) Yalumba D.... such a great sparkling red. However if you can't find this just make sure you try a sparkling red - the good folk of the Barossa shouldn't be allowed to keep this to themselves any longer!!

2) Rockford basket press Shiraz - failing that anything from Rockford rocks the big one, including their winery and staff which goes down as the best of the best of my winery visits