It is Finished!

After five months and one week the 2009 fruit intake has ended! It's certainly been the longest vintage I've ever been involved in. Gruelling by any measure, though an absolute thrill to be a part of nine different white varietals, six different red varietals and four different wine styles. Sheer Bedlam!

I left the winery this morning at a shade after midnight with the press still humming and whooshing away. Botrytised Semillon that got the full twelve hour press treatment. This was after starting at 6:15 am the previous day! The last day of vintage, the last press for the year, barring an excursion into the northern hemisphere for a "quick" vintage. The relief is palpable, a huge sigh relinquishing the burden of further fruit intake. I'm amazed I'm even able to string a cohesive sentence together!

I have no synopsis of the wines at this stage except that in the words of one happy customer, "love the wine AK, it's bitching".

Now the "rough draft" of most wines are complete, it's time to send them off to editing and publishing. Trials, trials, trials and thankfully very few tribulations. This is the part of the wines life cycle that has such a huge impact on what you taste in the bottle. It's the polish on the paintwork so to speak. A great time to reflect on the wines, the vintage and to work "normal hours". A further chance to look at the previous vintage in preparation for bottling and to catch up on all those, "I bring a beer around after vintage", conversations.

I look forward to sharing one with you.

Cheers!

ak

Never Ending Vintage

Whilst all of my peers have long had holidays after a testing vintage, I'm still going! If the Botrytis wines from Adelaide Hills weren't so good I would have finished ages ago. The reality is the Bot Sem of Magpie Springs is stunning. At 19.2 Baumé and 3.6 pH the juice is golden, zesty and concentrated. Enjoying these type of wines during the cold is a buzz though means that "the Bedlam Wines nut case" is still crushing grapes in June.

Bedlam Wines is unique wine label as I produce each year what I'm inspired to. This means that I have no set list of wines, sort of like how your favorite restaurant changes its menu. I will be keeping a couple of wines "on the menu" when I am able to consistently get the fruit. Until then I'm a painter who crafts what inspires.

The wines that we will release shortly will reflect a Trinitarian balance of flavour, aroma and texture. Absolutely unique, but reflecting where they come from, who created them and in what circumstances. The process looks like Bedlam, especially during vintage, but I would prefer to refer to it as a fractal.

I hope you enjoy drinking my wines as much as I enjoy making them!

ak