Darshan Back Story – 3 September 2020
This is the summary from my presentation to the Victorian Pinot Noir Workshop in November 2019 detailing the establishment of our Darshan high density vineyard. It is sourced from these photos and records documenting and explaining the nature of the works.
Pictured is a bloody big bulldozer, but this Cat had no idea…….
You really would think that when driving a powerful D6 dozer the driver would know exactly where they were headed before the gripping and ripping began. But on this day this Cat was all over this park….all over the Darshan vineyard site. To the operator’s defence, this was the first time he’d deep ripped such narrow vineyard sites. After much head scratching and cursing the driver, vineyard surveyor and technology agent eventually got their collective minds around the software alignment and the big Cat got purring. That day they burned plenty of their time and diesel and they burned a lot of our money!
The big Cat was here in May 2013 as we established the Darshan site by deep ripping twice to a depth of 1m for 1.1m wide rows for 11,000+ vines per hectare. After working in vineyards and making vintages in Europe in the 1990s it could be perceived that these new Bindi works were based on those inspiring experiences and places, and in part they were. With domestic pride and no cultural cringe, it is important to understand the establishment practices commenced in 2012 and implemented through 2013 to 2016 were fundamentally local. There was no specialised equipment or imported technique used to establish the vines until the third season, which then saw different equipment doing similar work to that already being done in the wide rows. How parochial, Oi, Oi Oi!