HEASLIP WINES NEWSLETTER
Hello and welcome to our third newsletter. In this issue we have a look at the season since our second newsletter, provide a few recipes that match our wines, include a few new photos and introduce our 2006 vintage. We have some specials for the 2005 and provide an insight into the relevance of the "Dayspring" on the Shiraz label.
This edition features:
The minimum pruning technique we adopted seems to have had some positive results. This winter broke a new record, set last year, for the driest winter in South Australia since records have been taken. On top of that we have also had the driest January in eight years and a three-week spell between late December and mid January in which temperatures ranged between 37 and 43 degrees Celsius.
We have managed to achieve a reasonable crop with an okay canopy. The crop this year is more consistent, with more vines producing an average yield. Some of this can be put down to the vines maturing more, but with such a dry year last year they can't have extended their root zone too much. So, the pruning technique could well have helped. It will take a few years to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the technique.
I was speaking with Jim Pearson of Pearson's Wines in Watervale the other week, and he has noticed an increase in canopy weight after an early pruning, as the vines have had a chance to put on more growth before the hot weather starts to shut them down. This would possibly equate to a slightly earlier bud burst enabling a quicker start to the season for shoot growth.
It just so happens that we pruned early last year (in May compared to late June/July in a normal season). Maybe this has something to do with the increased canopy this year, but would not necessarily account for increased fruit count. The fruit count improvement could be due to the increased number of spurs or it could just be because of the fruit-less season last year.
A much longer-term overview will give a clearer picture.
This small example shows the different little permutations that can consume the mind of a viticulturalist, and part of what makes the growing of grapes to produce wine such an interesting and exciting thing.
Fortunately we had some reasonable downfalls in spring, which have helped maintain the crop. It is still amazing that the vines have produced what they have though. An inch of rain right now would be very welcome and help see the vines through to harvest. Without a bit of rain now, the vines may struggle to finish off the season, and therefore produce a wine that is missing that something special that a good season produces.
A very hot three-week spell starting December 26th brought about dramatic colouring of the grapes and accompanying hot winds caused some burn in the Shiraz, especially at the top of the hill. The Cabernet Sauvignon down the bottom of the valley along the winter creek were unscathed. Harvest should be early this year. Shiraz looks like being picked early in March and Cabernet Sauvignon late march.
So far in February (now the 14th) we have had cool weather. No rain to speak of though, of course! The grapes are holding up okay and sugar levels are slowly building. A cooler February will produce a wine with a bit more elegance. Fingers crossed for the next three weeks.
Top
Since starting this Newsletter we have now picked the Shiraz - Sunday March 2nd . We had a good crew of family and friends and a great after-picking party. Check out the photos at the end of this section.
The crop was down on weight – not so much juice in the berries, and the bunches were fairly small. This equates to a high skin to juice ratio. Not sure what effect this will have on the end product. Time will tell. We did a quick test on the juice on Sunday and the Baume, colour and taste were all good. We are now in the hands of the wine-maker.
I guess our way of looking at it is that our wines are a true representation of the seasons that we are having in the Clare Valley. There is no blending of wine from past seasons or different regions, and no irrigation for stressed vines.
Not really the best time to be trying to start a winemaking venture but we are looking at it in terms of a much bigger picture. We hope the vines and our family will still be making wine here for another 100+ years.
We picked the Cabernet Sauvignon on Wednesday March 12. There was a mix-up with our winemaker not getting back to us on the date best for picking, so the grapes were picked a bit late. A normal Baume reading for red grapes is 14.5 - 15.0, ours were reading 18.0!! Baume is an indication of ripeness and potential alcohol reading. Our wine won't be 18.0% alcohol though as this can be tweaked a bit.
It has been a crazy harvest in the Clare Valley . We have just today (Thursday March 13th) broken the national heatwave record (consecutive days over 35 degrees Celsius) and we still have another 5 - 7 days of it to go. This means that Shiraz and Cabernet are being picked before Riesling and there is a massive bottle-neck in wineries as everything is ripening at the same time and needs to come off the vines all at once. And when all the dust settles, who knows - maybe we will end up with some decent wines in 2008!
 
 
Top
Following are a few recipes that Philippa has scoured the internet and recipe books for, and then cooked them up in our kitchen to verify their quality. Well, I cooked the lamb as Philippa is a vegetarian. This dish will go well with any of the wines. It would also be perfectly accompanied by the couscous. The lasagne and couscous as stand alone meals would be best with either the Shiraz or the blend. Our new wines are of a much lighter style, which is great for eating with meals or just drinking on a warmer day.
A general rule of thumb is the darker the meat or the spicier the meal, then the bigger the wine. I am personally more of the opinion that any wine with any food is worth trying, as until you have tried it, you don't know how it will go.
If you have a particular recipe you like that fits perfectly with a wine; e-mail it to us and we will post it on the website.
-------------------------
COUSCOUS WITH MEDITTERANEAN SPICES
METHOD
ROASTED VEGETABLES AND PESTO LASAGNE
METHOD
____________________________________________
LAMB LOIN CHOPS WITH GARLIC-PROVENCALE SAUCE
METHOD
We named the Shiraz block in memory of Jeff, using the name of his father's farm that he worked on when leaving school. Following is an unedited version of a few bits of paper found in a box of dad's stuff we found while cleaning out the shed. It explains why the name meant so much to him.
Dad used to spend a lot of time in his little shed below the house when he retired. It was his little escape and some of that time was spent on the electric typewriter. The second piece shows a bit of an insight into life on a sheep property in the 1950's.
There are some humorous comments on overcoming problems, and I know that you would never get me cutting some bore casing with a hacksaw. What a job!
ORIGIN OF DAYSPRING AND IT'S IMPORTANCE TO ME
The name is one word: "Dayspring"
1. Any alteration to it would change it's meaning and destroy the important relevance to the Ninety Mile desert, of which it was once a part.
2. It is also the place where I grew to manhood, at times in some loneliness (not an uncommon lot for the children of men with a vision), and the name is dear to my memories.
3. 'Dayspring' is a biblical word for 'dawn' or, more poetically, 'the dawning' and is to be found in the first chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, verses 78 & 79, and is rendered in many ways. The one I prefer is: '...the dayspring from on high hath visited us...'
I think it also occurs in the Old Testament but I can't remember where.
4. It has one further significance for me in that it was also the name which my mother gave to her wedding ring.
Jeff Heaslip
"A BRIEF HISTORY OF DAYSPRING"
"My first recollection of Dayspring was camping in a patch of low heath and mallee with my father and his younger brother, Lloyd, in 1947, not far from an old shepherd's hut inhabited with what is one of my enduring memories: bees in the living quarters.
Dad's idea was to provide ex servicemen with a 1000 acre block of land for which they worked for 3 years and bought at cost. The only people I can remember doing so are Jim Bourne and his family, who moved farther south east after a short time, Reg Dow, with whom I lived for a year and Arthur and Joyce Hannaford and their 5 children who were the only successful (if that is the appropriate word) members of the scheme.
Jim lived in the shed at the NE corner of the property while the house on the top of the hill to the south was being built, and then for a time in the house. The only other inhabitant of the shed was Lofty Morris who worked for Dad on Gilles Down, 13 miles SW of Iron Knob, prior to his time on Dayspring. I have no idea how long he spent there but I did see him one day in 1965 outside the Gresham Hotel on the corner of King William St and North Terrace. We sat in the gutter and had a yarn. He was working somewhere in the Snowy Mountains.
I began working for my father early in 1954 after Jim had left and when Arthur and Joyce were in the stone place, and left at the end of 1959, spending most of my time picking stones and stumps, carting and spreading hundreds of tons of superphosphate (a bag an acre every year), digging wells, erecting windmills and installing troughs, putting up miles of fencing (the last of which is still there on the south side of the road opposite Arthur's place), crushing stone for the more sandy patches of the tracks, running a large flock of merrino ewes which were mated to Romney Marsh rams to produce a top quality fat lamb for the English market (4 pounds a head when our wage was 10 pound a week found), and all the other bits and pieces common to all farms. We also ran a herd of about 50 cows mated to Aberdeen Angus bulls, and used 2 stock horses. One was a mare which was well broken and no trouble to catch, but had no idea what she was doing. Keeping her under control, while not difficult, was a full time job. Let the reins go slack for an instant and she was off, straight through the middle of the mob. On one occasion, on the way back to unsaddle, I let her have her head in the paddock behind the shearer's quarters. At the gate into the holding paddock she wanted to turn in while I wanted to continue the ride. She hit the strainer post with an almighty thump and took it clean out of the ground, all 3 feet of it. She went one way and the post and I went the other. I don't know what she felt like next morning, but I could hardly move. The old gelding was the quietest thing on 4 legs you could ever wish to ride. You could doze off in the saddle while he kept the mob in order and was wonderful at cutting out cattle from the mob. His only drawback was that he was 17 hands high. Fortunately I had been a good gymnast at school, and pretty agile, so I didn't have to use a ladder. I mention this only because of my height: 5 feet and half an inch.
My notes say that the cattle were there before the sheep, and that the sheep had to be shorn at Ski's once, before the shed was finished. But that must have been the year before I got there.
Early in the scheme of things, Dad bought a property on the eastern side of Murray Bridge , on the left and up the hill, immediately beyond the bridge. He installed Lawrie Cockshell, from Jabuk, as a mechanic and also grew oranges. A pump was installed several feet above the highest previously recorded flood but that didn't stop the 1956 flood rising 2 feet above the pump house.
When Arthur & Joyce moved to the house on their own property, I moved to the stone house and lived in the room at the end of the garage in the backyard. My housekeepers and working men were Tom & Eileen Lawless, followed by Kevin & Judy Clark and, somewhere in there, Bob Lampe who stayed only a year or so. After a couple of years I moved to the shearer's quarters and was still living there when I left. For periodic company I had Jack Briggs from Melrose with his shearers (and sons) for crutching and shearing twice a year, a young English lad for a while, Terry Kirby (who had a block between us and Sky Kings on the North side of the track), and two big strong German boys, Otto the wiry one and Eric the burly one, who put the flooring in the woolshed. They showed me how to get a bag of super under each arm and carry them on to the truck instead of using a sack truck. I preferred the sack truck. There were also a couple of surveyors who surveyed the western part beyond Hannaford's. My longest surviving housemate was Frank Brock, one of the easiest blokes to get on with I have ever met.
I have some notes which say that Reg Dow lived in the stone house between the Bourne's and Arthur & Joyce, and boarded with Arthur & Joyce when they moved in on the 5th of October 1951 . One month later, on the 5th of November, the weather turned on a Guy Fawkes Day of it's own with a gale that took the roof off the house, threw it at the overhead tank and the Freelite, and demolished the lot. I have films of that. Somewhere! Reg's house was built in 1953 and housed the men who built the woolshed which was bought from a firm in Casterton whose name has slipped my mind. The time lines I have in mind seem to be insufficient for all these events, but it may be that they are not in chronological order. The shed was up for my first shearing, but the large floor area must have been done later.
Water was always a problem, which explains why the country was called the "90 Mile Desert" and we only solved it by digging wells, which ranged in depth from about 10 feet to 20 feet. Bores proved useless and were responsible for two episodes I would rather forget. The first was that I dropped a perfectly good hammer down one. The second was that I had to cut a length of bore casing in two with a hacksaw. Try it sometime. The useable water sat on top of the unusable water such that, if we went too deep we had to backfill it until it was useable. The depth of useable water was 2 to 3 feet, but it varied a little. The wells were timbered with old sleepers which we picked up on the railway line. We cut them to size with a circular saw, cut toggles and fitted them when the well was as deep as it could be. A mill, fitted with a sand screen, and a trough, finished the job. Theoretically it was barely suitable for sheep, being about 1000 grains, but all the stock got used to it. Our stock losses were much higher than would normally be tolerated, about 10%, but a lot of that was due to foxes and thieves.
Clarrie Hutchens did all our deep ploughing for us, at 3 Pounds an acre I think and I believe the South East block, "Belara", was legally transferred to him in payment. It was later bought back and is again part of "Dayspring" now owned by Tom Haas."
Our 2006 vintage is finally bottled after a few delays getting labels sorted. You can order your wine now. It will be ready to drink at the end of April. This is because of the disturbance that happens during bottling. The wine needs some time to settle down again.
The 2006 wine is a lighter style, better to suited to the difficult growing years we are now experiencing. The colour is a vibrant purple and the wine has a pleasant bouquet. Palate is dry and a smooth finish with fairly strong tannins, especially the Shiraz. It is great for drinking on either warm summer days or in winter, and a great accompaniment for food.
The price for the 2006 vintage will remain the same price as the 2005 vintage.
We are also offering a special on the 2005 vintage. We have Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz/Cabernet blend remaining. For a limited time you can purchase either of these wines or a split dozen for $120.00. That's only $10.00 a bottle for Clare Valley wine. The blend is drinking sensationally now and the Cabernet is not far behind.
Click the link below to visit the online store:
Visit Heaslip Wines Online Store!
Top
You will find some other great information and photos on the website:
www.heaslipwines.com.au
Check it out and order some wine!
Top
Next issue, we will delve into the depths of sugar levels, Baume and the other parameters that determine when grapes are ready to be picked, one of which includes the crunching of the seeds.
There are some new photos on the website as well as the updated wine list. If you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact us.
We hope you have a great continuation of the start to 2008, and all you northerners please try and send some of that rain down our way.
Take care.
THE HEASLIP CLAN
© Copyright 2007
|
