Sauvignon Blanc 2009

The wine has proved popular, small as the quantity is. There are delicate fruit tastes and it has a clean finish.

It is from my tiny first harvest this year. The vines were planted in 2005 and struggled through their first few years, particularly 2007 which was very dry. There was no water in the dam, and I hand watered them with 20 litre containers filled up from the house water tank and taken along the rows with the trailer. Anyway, 2008 they put on some growth and grew a few bunches, and there were a harvestable amount of small aromatic bunches and we picked 100kg.

This was too small a quantity for Chris Derrez to make wine from in his commercial winery, so Phil Stevenson helped me. We dragged out his crusher from under corrugated iron sheets in the paddock, and then I pressed it in his small basket press, lined with a bit of old fly screen mesh. Then Phil loaded it into a large plastic drum, gassed it, and we took it to the cool stores to ferment. We racked it after about 11 weeks and took it to Chris, who bottled it, 90 half bottles from 100kg of grapes.

I expect to get between ¾ and 1 tonne this year.