Every weekend Simmo can be relied on to bring some visitors to Moody’s Wines, after he has taken them on an expert tour of the attractions of Orange and Millthorpe. They are always having fun, and are always good value to entertain at the cellar door. Click on the link below to contact the maestro.

But inside the cellar door there is a warm wood fire and a warm welcome! Any Saturday and Sunday!

The Sauvignon Blanc has now been bottled, and it should be labelled by the weekend of 19 June. In the meantime, I have a few cases of unlabelled bottles for tastintg at the cellar door. The taste s fresh with fruity aromas and it drinks well.

I will be selling it (half bottles) at $12, or $130 for a case of 1 dozen.

Please come and taste it!

The village of Misato, 150km SW of Nagoya

I had the chance to visit the local sake brewery, where I was shown the process of receiving the rice (in 1 tonne batches), washing it, spreading it on tables and grading it (10% of the best grains are taken for making the equivalent of reserve sake), fermentation, creation of a yeast from a small batch and then adding water to bring it to drink strength before secondary fermentation and bottling.

The cooling/grading tables - see how spotless everything is!

The supermarket in the nearby provincial town had an aisle devoted to different brands and grades of sake, with the most ordinaire packaged in 2 litre tetrapaks! There was also an aisle for wine, several French generic labels, a few Australian generics and only a handful of Californian, Italian and Argentinian.

So we are going to do it again in October for Wine Week, when Spring should have returned to Emu Swamp!

Well. Rain ruined my Sauvignon Blanc harvest, and it played its part in the 2010 Shiraz harvest too. We started picking on Sunday (28 March) but it was hot, we were few, and the crop was big. The grapes were lovely, big, full, tasty bunches. But we did not finish that day, so I took the grapes to Chris and brought back another bin, to quickly finish the harvest on Monday morning.

But when I woke up at 7am it was p***ing with rain, so I rang the pickers and told them to come at 10am. They did, the rain had abated, and we went on picking a larger and larger crop. But it started raining again, we put the harvest under cover, and continued in the rain. By 4pm we had filled all containers, a full load, and there was still half a ton left!

But it had stopped raining so we started the dash over to Chris. But the other side of Orange a very sudden thunderstorm emerged from nowhere and dropped heaps of rain on our grapes! Nevber mind, Chris said he would get the grapes out and leave the water behind.

The verdict: 1.6 tonnes delivered (100 cases) baumé 12.5, and taste very promising!

However, the RAINS CAME. 20mm on Saturday and 40mm on Sunday. A week ago they all looked beautiful, very promising. But today when we picked, half of the crop was damaged as you see in the picture, and we only delivered under 300kg to the wine maker.

The pictured grapes were not picked!

Amazing how quickly things can change. In January I was watching my dam run dry and worrying about the grapes failing to fill. In 2009 I had 500mm rain altogether, and the average for here is 900mm. InJanuary this year I got 20mm – but then along came February and, now, last weekend.

I have checked the Shiraz, and there does not seem to be much damage to them, and they would have another couple of weeks before they are ready.

But, count my blessings, there are other vineyards round here that have had their whole crop wiped out.