Passing Clouds

by Graeme Leith

  Friday, 26 March

  Crush and destem the rest of the Humphreys’ merlot into Dionne, and the Grahams’ cab franc into Marilyn. Phil brings in some samples of the Zonnebeke merlot, rejected five days ago as it was down in baumé, but has now rocketed up—it’s 13 degrees so they’ll have to pick as soon as possible. We’ve got to keep Anna free for the first shiraz so will crush into Olivia (she holds 1.25 tons) and surplus can go into Esmé then Ina.

  Jill has reached the danger point of fermentation as the amount of yeast cells is at a maximum, so we put the cooler on her to control the temperature before it takes off. We give Gold another couple of hours cooling before changeover. We’ve added some bentonite to help her clarify and drop some lees sediment and clean up the juice prior to ferment, and we’ll soon rack her off into Silver. Somebody told me of a new yeast strain that works well with sauv blanc so I’ve ordered some of that; it’s the most sauv blanc we’ve made so we may as well give it every chance of success.

  Saturday, 27 March

  Zonnebeke merlot comes in early afternoon. The morning is taken up with testing samples from our home vineyard, Zonnebeke cabernet and Richard McHardy’s shiraz from Weila just down the road. Normal winery duties are taking up quite a lot of time now; every vat is hand-plunged for ten minutes or so, then temperature, pH and baumé taken and recorded on the whiteboard, so that we can track the rate of fermentation of any particular batch at a glance.

  We crush the Zonnebeke fruit and do the afternoon plunging, then have a quick meal at the house and go back to the winery to clean up. I stay back alone in the winery after Susie has gone home. I love to have a glass or two of wine in the company of the vats, listening to the murmur of the ferments, hearing ‘the girls’ whispering to each other, luxuriating in the aromas and, less enjoyably, worrying about where we’re going to fit everything when the shiraz comes in. Apart from the open fermenters, we can ferment in Silver and Gold, which will take more than 4 tons each and have the advantage of being able to be pumped over—that is, connecting the inlet hose of the pump to the lower valve, opening it up and pumping the cooler unoxygenated juice from the lower section and spraying it onto the cap of the ferment above. This was a perilous business at one stage when we had to do it from ladders. But now we stand on our wonderful new catwalk and do it in safety and comfort. The 2-inch pump we use creates enough force for the wine to break through the tough skins, making hand-plunging unnecessary. I’ve been comparing the wines resulting from both the hand-plunged and the pumped-over for years, and at this stage can see very little difference. This is gratifying as it’s a lot easier to turn on a pump and hold a hose than physically force the cap under with the plunging tool.

  Plunging can require considerable effort or weight. One morning years ago, my then assistant, the diminutive Winifred, called to me for help; she was trying to punch a cabernet ferment with particularly tough skins and couldn’t break through the cap, so was bouncing up and down on the plunging tool like a kid on a pogo stick. I lent her a bit of weight and we both had a good laugh. China Gleeson, on the other hand, who worked for many vintages, used to love plunging; it was the one time of the year he got to lose some fat and put on muscle.

  Sunday, 28 March

  All the merlot and cab franc are in and start fermenting, all is under control, normal winery duties proceeding, things looking good. After plunging we go to the Grahams for a barbecue.

  Monday, 29 March

  All still appears to be under control and God is in his Heaven. Then while we’re having coffee after the morning plunging, there’s a huge bang up near Gold and Silver and a resounding clang as if giant stainless-steel cymbals have been struck. We drop everything and rush up. There’s a lovely smell of fermenting sauvignon blanc. The wild yeasts have decided that they can dominate my sulphur additions and my cooling, and have taken off in Silver. I’m sure this wouldn’t happen in a more professional place. The lid had a solid silicon bung in it and as the carbon dioxide was produced and the pressure grew, the silicon bung resisted it, but the silicon tube around the variable capacity lid could not—it proved too powerful for the tube and let go, sending that 2-metre wide metal lid flying.

  No damage is done except to the tube, which is shredded, so we decide now is a good time to rack from the custard-like bentonite lees into Silver, ready for further fermentation, which hydrometer readings confirm is well underway. And I still haven’t received my special expensive sauvignon blanc yeast! If it comes in time we’ll put some in anyway, and although it won’t dominate the wild yeast it will at least work with it—harmoniously, we hope.

  Tuesday, 30 March

  I’m awoken at 3.45 a.m. by Bruno running around the house whining and barking; he can hear a thunderstorm coming, or senses it. I can hear or see nothing so I suppose he senses it. I try to comfort him but he is trembling, clearly distressed. I’m glad I didn’t let him out last night. Last year at Daylesford he took off prior to a thunderstorm and mercifully was found the next day by a considerate neighbour who had a hunch and looked in the old change rooms by the lake where he found Bruno, hiding in the corner, long after the storm had passed. I suppose that golden retrievers go to earth in storms for reasons best known to themselves.

  Too late to try to sleep again, so I go over the dry creek to the winery with Bruno on a strong chain—a novelty for him. The sauv blanc is sitting comfortably at 12 degrees Celsius due to the ministrations of the cooling machine. All other temperatures are good so I plunge the reds or pump over according to the vessel, and by the time Bill gets to the winery at 7.30 a.m. we are clear to get everything ready for pressing the Burdett merlot out from the tank that Jill Burdett has lent me. But we decide after an hour’s bucketing and carrying to the press that she (now named Jill) is not a good fermenter for red wines. It’s just too hard to get the skins and pips out; the sides are too high to remove them from the top and the hatch is too small to successfully remove them from the bottom. But Susie and Bill pitch into it with goodwill and humour and we have the press loaded and running by eleven. I’ve done some calculations and booked the pickers for tomorrow, Wednesday. I have to go to Melbourne today via Daylesford so I’d better leave at 12.30 p.m.

  More than an hour to Daylesford. I get there, shower, change then collect the things son Cameron wants dropped off at his lodgings in Russell Street in Melbourne. Surfboard I can find, likewise wetsuit, but I can’t find the didgeridoo or the runners. Quick phone call to Cam, who’s fortunately not in class, and we sort that out. I find the didge and the runners.

  Vince Tallarida is modifying some draining screens that I bought from him for Silver and Gold; they don’t work properly on our unirrigated fruit. Susie has washed the shredded tube from Silver and put it in the ute. I want to show it to Vince for fun and ask for my money back, tongue firmly in cheek. Get to his factory in Brunswick, close to the city, and have to wait a while before Vince can give me his attention. I collect the modified screens and show Vince the exploded tube. I had noticed a pleasant and fruity aroma in the car on the way down and vaguely wondered where it was coming from. Vince could smell it on the tube and said, ‘You’ve been making something nice and aromatic in that tank. Sauv blanc, perhaps?’ Spot on, Vince!

  I’m due at the Windsor Hotel for the annual Stonier International Pinot Noir Tasting which I feel I need to attend every year, despite it being held during my vintage, because there we can learn more about the elusive pinot noir, tasting and discussing the best from around the world.

  Through the traffic to Russell Street, give Cameron a call on the mobile as arranged, to Victoria Hall where he meets me and takes his stuff, a quick chat, and then off to the Windsor. Get a park dead opposite the entrance, charge the meter and I’m inside by 5.40 p.m. for enrolment, a glass of bubbly and a couple of nori rolls before filing in.

  Say hello to James Halliday, leading wine judge and writer, who says, ‘You must be pleased with your ’02s.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agree smugly, ‘p
articularly the Coldstream Pinot that beat the Coldstream Hills ones.’

  ‘Do you mean the Three Wise Men?’

  ‘No,’ I explain, ‘the Passing Clouds one—made from fruit I purchased from the McKernans just down the road from your place.’

  Len Evans is there and James begins berating him for not having acknowledged the case of Reserve Coldstream Hills Chardonnay James had sent him. He defends himself on the grounds that he thought someone else had sent it. For two senior gentlemen they have a lot of boyish fun.

  The tasting is as good as ever. Grant van Every is our table captain, and when he asks to talk on the first flight of five wines, I suggest that in order to save time we try to knock out the ones we clearly don’t like due to supposed faults and concentrate on the others. Each ‘flight’ consists of five glasses of wine identified only by number. The idea is that the tasters will evaluate and rate the wines during discussion with the others at the table. The provenance of the wines is revealed later.

  Grant suggests I start with one, so I have a go at number three that to me seems to clearly have a fault. Grant says, ‘Yes, brettomyces.’ (Wine with brett tastes ‘dirty’ to most people.) However, Chris at the table says he likes it. Later Grant told me that one of the wineries represented here has had its problems with ‘brett’ for years and that could be it. When the wines were unmasked later it turned out to be from that winery, and surprisingly (to me), because I can’t abide the smell or taste of brett, gathered some conditional approving comment from the panel.

  The guest panellist, Jean-Pierre De Smet, chose French wines as his preferred. One Australian wine got a hammering from everybody, particularly Halliday, for over-the-top ripeness; the winemaker was not there so everybody could get stuck into him in his absence. The judging panel made thought-provoking and sometimes controversial comments. Len Evans has always liked to provide a contrary point of view, as he considers structure more important than other qualities; he may well be right, and he gets everyone thinking. Can’t help but admire their palates, wine memories and perception—that is why they’re judges and I’m a mere winemaker, I suppose.

  Gary Baldwin, winemaking consultant, comes up to say hello after the tasting and agrees that number three has problems and commented that some people don’t see some taste aspects of ‘brett’ as a bad thing. At any gathering of wine people you always learn something and it’s often something you don’t expect to learn.

  A buffet meal, mostly salmon for me, then out into the night where the wind is blowing hard at 9.30 p.m. I think of Musk where the wind will be twice as strong and decide to take the Ballarat Road rather than the Calder Highway. If I take the Calder I then go to Daylesford on the Woodend–Daylesford road past Musk and will not be able to resist the temptation to drive in and look at my nets, knowing that if they’re blowing off I’ll be trying to lash them down in my suit in the darkness and the gale. Fool on the Hill, indeed! No, better wait until morning and repair whatever damage there may be in the daylight when the wind has abated.

  I drive up to the family house at 11 p.m. to see the white Magna in the driveway and the bedroom light on. Julien is home—is this good or bad? It’s bad.

  ‘I thought you were staying in Melbourne,’ she says. ‘Jesse said so.’

  ‘No, I told you the night before last that I wasn’t. In any case I wouldn’t have left Bruno overnight in the backyard without running it past you.’

  Wordless and furious she dresses, goes out to her car and drives off to somewhere. I drink a lovely little stubby of Heineken and go to bed on my side of the now-deserted marital couch. I don’t need the guest room.

  Wednesday, 31 March

  Son Jesse, 14, wakes up in the morning expecting to be greeted by his mother, does a double-take and says, ‘Hello, Dad.’

  Jess is off to school. ‘Will I make your sandwich?’

  ‘No, buying lunch today, Dad. Have you got $5 on you?’

  ‘Okay. How was yesterday’s sandwich?’

  ‘Dunno, didn’t eat it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Forgot.’

  ‘Okay, get it out of your bag and put it on the table. I might have it for lunch today, and if it’s too far gone Bruno can have it.’

  A quick goodbye hug then Jesse’s off to the school bus and I go to Musk where inspection surprisingly reveals no damage, and then it’s on to Kingower, not fast for once.

  I haven’t heard from the winery crew, so assume that everything must be okay. Susie and Bill are pressing out so it’s a relaxed drive, and as I travel I speculate that this is probably my 3000th or so trip from Daylesford to Kingower. For the first three years or so, I often did it on the motorbike, the mighty Honda F1 750, and sometimes in the car. But as I increasingly had a dog or a case of wine or more, sometimes twenty cases, the motorbike fell into disuse and the Alfasud would do many punishing trips at speeds up to 180 kilometres per hour. The Alfa finally succumbed to electrical gremlins and odometer fatigue, although it still looked good to me and was still fun to drive—maybe like an ageing girlfriend with whom you’ve had many good times. So the first of the Hilux diesel utes was purchased and the Telecom ute left unregistered and relegated to vineyard use only. The return trip is 200 kilometres per day, so in three years that’s about 150,000 kilometres. Then for the next nine years or so I stayed overnight at Passing Clouds sometimes, especially in winter, so would then see the family every day, breakfast one day and dinner the next, probably averaging two-and-a-half trips per week, or 500 kilometres. Nine years at 25,000 kilometres per year, or 225,000 plus 150,000 = 375,000 kilometres. RACV research shows it costs $1.40 per kilometre to run a medium-sized diesel four-wheel drive, or $500,000 over twelve years. That’s a lot of money and time to go to work! But then a contributing factor to the demise of my first marriage was my failure to change the location of our family.

  I arrive back at Kingower to find everything working like a German band—Susie and Bill pressing, pickers picking, good cabernet coming from our own vineyard, very ripe but no shrivel yet, very healthy bunches. Our neighbour Mark Gilmore picked his cabernet in his vineyard, adjoining Passing Clouds, on Saturday, at 13 degrees baumé. Ours tasted riper, his soil a little hungrier and drier with some stress showing. Ours is now coming in at just over 14 degrees baumé. In the old days everyone seemed to pick at about 12.5 degrees baumé, but over the years we’ve steadily moved it up a per cent or two, as have most other people. The wine risks losing a little varietal and regional character, but seems to be compensated for by increased colour, tannin and mouthfeel due to the higher glycerol associated with the higher alcohol. Six pickers out there in our vineyard. They end up with 1.6 tons for the day, as they started on the sloping side of the vineyard where the fruit is small and light in weight.

  Richard McHardy comes in with samples of his shiraz that has miraculously jumped from 13 to 15-plus baumé in the week. This is not possible! On questioning, it turns out that the previous sample was from the Scott Henry trellised section that hadn’t seen as much water as the VSP (vertical shoot positioned) which, maybe due to the extra water and consequent additional healthy foliage, has ripened faster. I ask Richard to get some pickers into the VSP ASAP! I don’t really want a lot of 16 per cent alcohol monster shiraz—a little, maybe, for our microscopic share of the American market, but certainly not for the Graeme’s Blend.

  Have Jesse’s sandwich for lunch. Not bad. Thanks, Julien.

  The pinot grigio is fermented almost to dryness; we will give it a bit longer before stopping the fermentation and leave it with a tiny bit of sweetness to enhance the flavour. Lesley, the grower, won a medal with it last year and that’s why she wanted us to make it again, but making small batches with somebody else’s precious fruit is a great responsibility. The sauvignon blanc is at 4 degrees baumé and tasting delicious.

  The pickers go home, we continue crushing, and the battery-powered bin tipper stutters to a halt. Between the bin tipper and forklift it looks as if we have batt
ery problems. I ask Bill to slip into town and buy a couple of new ones. We finish the crushing and clean-up, and Bill installs the new batteries. ‘Hey, boss, do you know what year you bought those batteries?’

  ‘Well, yes, Bill, probably 1998.’ My parsimonious Scottish heritage coming back to bite me!

  We finish the plunging, Bill goes home and Susie and I taste the thirty-one barrels I’ve laid out on the concrete, ready for their final racking prior to their ultimate blending and bottling sometime down the track. Sue will book the bottling caravan and order the bottles and corks when we give her the estimated quantities. Susie and I have some biscuits and camembert and share a bottle of the ’03 Narre Warren East Pinot Noir, our first taste since bottling about three weeks ago. We taste it with some apprehension for there were a few green berries in the crush although the baumé readings were spot on. We’re happy with it. It doesn’t have the seductive cherry liqueur character of the 2002; it’s a little more vegetative but certainly not green. It’s early days yet, so all’s well and, anyway, I think I heard somewhere that the most famous pinot in the world, the Domaine Romanee Conti, shows a tiny touch of green in its youth!

  Later with dinner we try one of the 15.6 baumé shiraz that I contract-made for a couple of chaps two years ago, but it overpowers the steak and we only have a glass each. I’m not happy with these monster shiraz we make these days in terms of where they fit with food, particularly those that have some residual sugar. I wonder what’s the point—to me, they’re neither fish nor fowl, neither savoury nor sweet, and who needs that much alcohol anyway? It means a glass or two less of really good, lower alcohol wine you can drink in your life. However, they can be very seductive and people’s eyes often widen with surprised delight when they are presented with one of these big wines in the tasting room.