Growing Notes
Welcome to the Shiraz Republic’s Growing Notes. Here we keep you up to date with news direct from The President, Brian and President-elect, Spencer. This includes updates on harvest throughout the year, especially as we approach vintage, Rent-A-Row activities, events and more.
The Evolution of Rent-A-Row
Our Rent-A-Row Wine Experience began over 7 years ago, but has quickly become a month and a bit long festival of wine - and has attracted attention from punters and media alike. As we go on, Rent-A-Row is becoming an an increasingly social experience - a true...
Rent-A-Row 2019 Preparations
A quick update from Secretary of State Janet on the upcoming 2019 Rent-A-Row vintage, including explanations on what winemakers look for in the ripening of grapes.
Rage Against The Machines – New Bottling Line
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...
Two years of Cornella Brewery
A facelift This October sees Matt and Spencer overtake two years of brewing as Cornella Real, The Shiraz Republic's 200L nanobrewery. Since then there has been a lot of changes, observations and with the confidence of two years brewing, we've got some plans. The first...
Shiraz Republic wins Gold!
The Shiraz Republic has won Gold at the at the 2018 Riverina Murray Regional Tourism Awards held on Saturday 21st July in Deniliquin. Winners in 14 categories were announced at the gala awards ceremony from finalists including tourism businesses, events, restaurants,...
Winemaking 2018: All hands on deck
President-Elect Spencer reviews our winemaking during the 2018 Vintage. We have expanded on our production of Chardonnay & Rosé after the success of our small batches in 2017 and took the opportunity to create some new varieties, Tempranillo & Grenache alongside our regular Shiraz production.
Rent-A-Row 2018: Picking, Crushing & Pressing
Secretary of State Janet reviews the 2018 Rent-A-Row harvest. 2018 saw us grow to 124 groups of winemakers, each visited to vineyard to pick their grapes, crush them into wine and press the resulting product into their own demijohn for maturation through to winter.
No Two Seasons Are The Same
“Quantity was down, but the quality was up.”, It’s a cliche, but there is a lot of truth in it. The President reviews our 2018 Grape Harvest & recaps the story of the season.
Baume Readings 21 Feb – Harvest Begins
We began harvest on Wednesday 21st Feb with a significant pick from the two areas of the vineyard that seemed to be the most advanced in ripening. The good news is- "It's ready", the not so good news is "It's early". So get ready, I am already running full tilt trying...
Baume’ Readings 14th Feb
OK. Resume normal programming. The week of milder temperatures has slowed down the ripening process. Overall the grapes moved 1.0 Baume' on average. The lowest sample is sitting on 11,1 Be and the highest on 13.1 Be with the average from the 13 test rows being 12.3...