by Spencer Page | Nov 8, 2018 | 2017 Vintage, Wine
Bottling and packaging is an often neglected, but hugely important part of the wine game, but how one bottles is hugely dependent on scale and available technology. Never having a bottling line, in the early years of winemaking our wine would be made on-site, then...
by Spencer Page | Nov 9, 2017 | 2017 Vintage, Growing Notes, Rent-A-Row
We are now entering the final stage of winemaking for our Rent-A-Row winemakers, bottling and labelling. We are in the midst of scheduling and organising bottling with our 2017 winemakers and helping them to design great labels for their wine (so far, they have been...
by Spencer Page | Sep 6, 2017 | 2017 Vintage, Wine
Rack Off Racking off is transferring the wine from one vessel to another, leaving the sediment behind. Sediment is made up of lees (dead yeast cells) and any remaining seeds or skins that snuck through the pressing process, known at the Republic as ‘sludge’. It is a...
by Spencer Page | Apr 30, 2017 | 2017 Vintage, Growing Notes, Rent-A-Row
The Beginning Our Rent-A-Row experience started in 2013 with only a handful of Citizens learning how to make wine. It grew to 17 groups in 2016; then came articles in The Age, Weekly Times and Broadsheet in May 2016. Our Citizens grew to over 90 groups for the 2017...
by The President | Mar 27, 2017 | 2017 Vintage, Growing Notes, Vineyard
Beautiful ripe fruit, but stubbornly low Baume’s have been the feature of this crazy 2017 vintage. What a contrast to 2016! Last year we had a record early start to vintage and within 2 weeks Baume’s were over 15 and winemakers were complaining that both...
by The President | Mar 8, 2017 | 2017 Vintage, Growing Notes, Rent-A-Row, Vineyard
We are ready to go. It’s been slow but stready progress to harvest. Hopefully that means the ripening process will continue to be slow and we will get the whole crop off with some beautiful figures. The weather since mid-February has been fantastic. Warm days...