The Wine Blokes

Another Day, more grapes, more wine.
A quick introduction to the Smithbrook Vineyard and Winery.

Jon F. 
Last night turned out to be one of those nightmare shifts for all involved.  I arrived at the office and winery at around 8.50pm ready to crush and press around 30 tonne of Sauvignon Blanc. 
Ash told me that I needed to be on the machine harvest team in 5 minutes, as Peter the main harvester [...]

Jon F.
 The other day I was speaking to a friend who worked vintage in a winery a few years ago, just to try something different. He’s in the construction industry, and had no previous experience prior to working vintage.  He was telling me how he used to think wine was a rip off and couldn’t [...]

Jon F. 
Yesterdays weather forecast was for light showers clearing during the day. Well today it rained for most of it, and it’s now quite cold and dreary, much like a winters day rather than later summer.
The rain in itself it not a huge issue at the moment as long as it doesn’t persist.  However the forecast is [...]

No more fruit is ready to pick. Sauvingon Blanc is sitting at around 20 Brix and table Chardonnay around the same. Good flavours are beginning to become apparent, but we will still be looking at around early to mid next week before we get too busy.
 Today we spent most of our time cleaning in the [...]

Last night was one of those nights.  My offsider in the winery couldn’t work for various reasons, and it all started fromt there.
It was meant to bet a short sharp shift.  10 tonne of Chardonnay for Sparkling base.  In and out of the winery in a few hours. I should know better. 
I was on my [...]

A brief introduction to the Smithbrook winery processing facility, looking at the setup and some of the equipment and infrastructure.

I’ve finally been able to upload a video to the site even though it took over 2 hours. Here is the first Episode of the video Diary which I hope will be a regular one over the next 5 weeks.
Enjoy!

By Jon F.
Vintage is well underway now and it looks as though things will get even busier if the warm weather keeps coming and grapes get ripe all at once.
On a technical note, I intended to post a video diary along side my normal posts, however the poor internet technology here means I can’t upload [...]

 
 After arriving 2 night ago, I completed my first night shift of vintage.  Quite a bit has changed at Smithbrook since I was winemaker / manager over 2 years ago, most notable in the winery. 
Just prior to my departure, Ashley (current Smithbrook Manager) and myself physically erected a large shed over what was then the [...]