Making wine in Mount Gambier
We are harvesting in Mount Gambier, at Good intentions winery, and the harvest is getting busier. Fun days of picking grapes and pressing wine! Enjoy.
Day 50
today is a day for relaxing, and getting some good energy again. We just did some cleaning and enjoyed the day. We went out for dinner at an Indian restaurant, enjoyed it! had some good wines and made it an early night.
Day 51
Today we are going to crunch the apples for the cider we are making this year, we are mixing it with a bit of pears and quinces, the plan is to leave it on the skins for a few days for some extra intense flavors and crush it after that. For the rest of the day we finished the labeling for the other wines and had an early night with a good sleep.
Day 52
Not a very busy day today! We did some vineyard work for the irrigation (water system), so nice to be in nature everyday, such a good start of the day. Later on we crunched the rest of the apples and pears. Later in the evening we had a nice dinner all together and enjoyed some good wines.
Day 53
A new day of harvesting grapes for the Pet nat, pinot noir and chardonnay. Some of chris his friends joined us for a day to help us with picking the grapes had a little tour in Mount Gambier and of course tasted all the wines. Today is a hot day in Mount gambier which is pretty unusual actually, its been cold the last couple of days since we’ve been here but today it’s 34 degrees!!! We started early with picking around 7 and finished at 2. a long but nice day of picking in the sun. We pressed the grapes right after we came back, in the old press, and had a great night with our friends drinking wine and sharing stories.
Day 54
Another beautiful day in Mount Gambier, today we are not going to pick any grapes. It’s a day of taking care of the vineyard fixing the irrigation, and enjoying the beautiful weather. The rest of the day wasn’t that busy so we could save up some energy for the upcoming days, the plan is to finish picking the pinot noir vineyard vineyard this week. Because of the nice weather we made a plan to go to the beach for a nice swim and surf, we ended up in browns bay beach, a beautiful beach with nice waves and cold water.
Day 55 - 56 - 57
We are picking the pinot noir vineyard for a few days in a row now. As the coronavirus is also getting a thing now here in Australia, we are kind of happy that we can isolate ourselves from the outside world and be in the vineyards all day, and seeing nothing else but grapes and nature. After the long hours of picking, we did some labeling and bottled the pet nat we fermented for a couple of days now. It’s all ready to go and ready to ripe further in the bottle. A very busy day with lots of interesting work, and we are more than happy to be in bed at the end of the day and have a good night sleep.
Day 58
Today we are picking again, but in an other vineyard, we are taking a 2 hours drive down the coast and are going to pick grapes in Cape Jaffa, and we are getting a lot of grapes!!! semillon, sauvignon blanc, merlot and pertit verdot in total 6 bins of 0,5 ton, a long day of picking for about 9 hours but we did a very good job. We stayed in robe, a little town next to Cape Jaffa for the night, had some beers and dinner in the pub, and went to bed for a good sleep and prepare ourselves again for the next day of picking.
Day 59
The last day of picking in Cape Jaffa, there is only one bin left of the six, after this we are heading back to the winery again. We had an very adventurous drive back as one of the grape bins of 0,5 ton almost fell off the trailer!! Luckily we found some very nice farmers who were able to help us put the bin back on again. We Easy night because we were all pretty tired after the hard days of picking the last week. We are done but very happy.
