Bindi News

Warning: No photos, just words.  Quite a few. There's a lane way that looks a likely place for a mugger or rough sleeper to inhabit.  Seemingly a street to nowhere good.  It just so happens to house the hottest restaurant in Chicago right now.  Don't bother looking for illuminated signage, there is none.  Walk though a working goods lift, dark and industrial.  Beyond the curtain veil in to a 28 seat room open to the kitchen.  Effectively, every table is a chef's table.  Eight hours later I left with a mind bended by outrageously great food and hospitality.  Staff training in the way of Bindi beforehand, serving eight Bindi wines to guests over their degustation dinner, then three hours of tasting, vocabulary stretching conversation about impossibly fine and complex dishes and great wine pairings all was done.  I said wow a lot to your excellence Oriel Restaurant, Chicago. Whilst the premise of these past two weeks was the Oregon International Pinot Noir Celebration the opportunity to be despatched nationwide by Ronnie Sanders and Aaron Meeker of Vine Street Imports was too good to pass up. IPNC is an iconic, soulful, confident gathering of passionate producers, professionals and consumers.  Having been a guest winery in 2008 under the Conservation banner it was hardly entering the unknown but formally presenting 14 Australian pinots Read more ...

The season of 2015-16 is the season of early.  Early Flowering, early fruit set, early veraison and, of course, early harvest.  All early by the calendar, but the whole season seemed shunted forward.  October was the new November, December was the new January and so on and February saw much of the ripening through mild and quite autumnal days. The end of March and early April has become, over the past 15 years, the normal time for harvesting at Bindi (which compares to the decade from 1991 to 2000 where we averaged mid April).  And the harvest is pretty much 110 to 115 days after the fruit set, which is normally at the end of November to early December.  In 2016 we again harvested between 100 and 115 days from harvest.  It's just that starting the harvest on March 4th and ending March 10th is quite mind boggling and sets an early record well ahead of the previous set on March 17th in 2008! And the quality, the style?  Well, at this early point the wines have great intensity, balance and length.  The winery was full of fine perfume as the Pinots fermented and the structures built with time on skins but overall the ferments were quite quick and exceptionally clean and easy.  At the very least it is a Read more ...

The season that is ahead of it’s time shows no signs of abating.  We now have January weather, yet we are still to pass GO and still yet to collect our $200 (Christmas and associated presents).  A strange season yet sensical in some way seeing Easter is very early in 2016 (end March).  The harvest is anticipated to be in the mid to end March range compared to recent years harvesting very end March and early April. The vines are in fine form (though some of the most bony, hard old soils are seeing some some vines with reduced shoot growth) with the majority of the vineyard having a beautiful, full canopy.  The flowering in November (again, very early) has seen an excellent crop level set and we will be doing some judicious green harvesting/crop thinning in late January.  The bunch size is quite small at this point but the bunch and berry numbers are high.  So far, the disease pressure is low and the rigorous early season shoot thinning and positioning sees the canopy quite open and airy. The new high density Pinot Noir planting (1.1m by 0.8m for 11,300 vines per hectare) is developing well and is on track and is growing some strong shoots which will set it up for a 2017 harvest.  The (5,000) vines have Read more …

The 2015-16 season has commenced and what an unusual beginning it has been.  From the coldest, harshest winter in 20 years with just enough rain to achieve good soil moisture we have jumped straight into an exceptionally warm, dry Spring.  Sadly, the promising rains of mid winter have seized up and things are drying out rapidly.  The positive to this is that the new shoots are really pushing along and not getting trapped in a restrictive Spring cold snap.  We have begun our series of intensive vineyard passes with ploughing, mowing, aerating, mulching and spraying (sulphur, seaweed and fish) and it’s a great pleasure to see the under vine strip of soil gently turned and opened.  Certainly, the prolific number of earthworms are testament to the health of the soil! The 2014s we offered have all but run out and we are paying careful attention to the evolution of the outstanding 2015s in barrel.  All those we show these wines to are quite astounded at the fruit purity, depth of flavour and harmony the wines already show.  As we always say, these are early days and we look forward to nurturing the wines to bottling and seeing how they settle and evolve. There has been concerning news north of the range with some incredibly early season fire danger.  Thankfully nothing Read more …

Bindi Harvest No. 25. The crop is in, long live the crop! In fact, the crop is now a crop no longer but rather has been transformed, by the miracle of native yeast fermentation, into beautiful wine. The 2015 harvest has one similarity to 2014 (stunning wine quality) however there the comparisons end. Where 2014 produced an extraordinarily small yield, 2015 saw the vines return a yield in line with 2010 and 2004 at around five tonnes per hectare (comparing to below two tonnes per hectare in 2014). Following a treacherous year like 2014 the temptation is to accept a very high yield, if that is the season and the vines response, in 2015 however we did considerable shoot thinning in Spring and followed up with a green harvest removal of 15% of the crop in early February. This focus on vine balance saw the stunning crop ripen evenly and the harvest ran between March 25th and April 1st. The fermentations have progressed very evenly, though, as is typical, half the Chardonnay barrels are still fermenting six weeks after harvest! They continue on and some may even ferment for ten months. The Pinot Noirs are resting in barrel with the odd barrel fighting the cold and throwing out a bung as some malo-lactic conversion takes place. All the Pinot barrels Read more …

The only sense of extreme experienced at this point the 2014/15 growing season is that it has been extremely mild.  Which in some ways makes it seem odd that harvest across Victoria is running very early however the whole season has tracked that way and, in fact, the lack of extreme heat has seen the vines progress in a very evenhanded way. The flowering in late November and early December occurred during generally lovely stable weather and the lack of heat spikes during the summer has seen the inter-row and paddocks in general maintain a green tinge.  Whilst there have been several grass greening rain events along the way overall it has been very dry and a post harvest, strong autumn break would be much appreciated. We expect to commence the harvest on about March 26th and have it completed over the following week or so.  This will see us running about a week earlier than is now usual and compares to picking from April 6 to 10 last year.  The fruit is in exceptional health and is not far off a perfect crop of around two tonnes per acre (five tonnes per hectare).  The flavours have developed very slowly and the mild autumn has seen the acids holding strongly as the sugars build.  The temptation is always to pick but the reward will Read more …

How quickly we move from the grey short cold days of winter dormancy (for vine, not custodian) to the green lengthening warm days of spring.  From the bud burst of mid September to the elongating shoots of October it is our most frantic time in the vineyard.  Mowing, cultivating under vine, applying sulphur, fish and seaweed emulsions as well as shoot thinning takes up a lot of time and demands a seven day a week commitment. Add in establishing a new ultra close planted vineyard (finishing planting today) and it seems there’s barely a spare moment to enjoy the splendour of the carpets of greens.  But take a moment we do and things are really looking beautiful.  The mature plantings are growing very well and we approach the rest of the growing season with much hope, and a little trepidation after several small harvests. Our new planting of Pinot Noir involves four clones (two new to us) and is mostly at a density of 11,300 vines per hectare.  A small section is planted to 22,600 vines per hectare.  This is very intensive (vines, materials and labour as well as some new equipment required) however we have high hopes for the specific site itself as well as the planning and work going into it.  Time, a long time, will tell! The season starts off Read more …

The task of winter pruning is upon us and forecasts of hail and snow are giving cause for digging deep into the winter clothing. Thermals are a must. The last of the 2013s are bottled and we will have news of these wines late in July. Suffice to say that despite the crop being 30% down on ideal yields the quality is exceptionally fine and as the wines settle post bottling they are beginning to sing their sweet tunes once more. The upsetting shortfall in 2013 is given context by the horrendous flowering experienced for the 2014 crop which has seen a reduction in yield in the order of 65%. As Bindi’s dad would say, Crikey! Things move on, regardless. The peas and oats established in the new vineyard sites we are preparing are growing well and will form an enriching ‘green manure’ in the Springtime before we begin our planting. An interesting observation; we planted in 1988 and more in 2001 and will again in 2014. Thirteen year gaps. Nothing unlucky there (maybe the tiny addition in 1992 with Block 5 broke that hoodoo?). The new sites being prepared are all on the same contour as Block 5 and will have a diverse mix of high quality clones planted at very high density (11,500 vines per hectare). Exciting. Until Read more …

Frost. Hail. Cold. Dry. Hot. Fire. Dear me. The romanticism of grape growing and wine making is being tested continually at every stage of this gruelling season. Yes, of course, we are well versed in the various ways the weather can affect the crop quality and quantity and we are always prepared for some of these challenges to occur during any season. However this season has been quite breathtaking in its audacity to throw down challenges, to both vine and grower, month on month. We press on! We began in September with some unseasonal warm weather which pushed the buds out earlier than usual. Our usual diligent attention to our frost protecting fan saw it serviced by the installer just prior to the first frost of the season. Unfortunately, the fan was rendered useless by a basic servicing error and it failed to run during a -2.7 degree frost event. We are still assessing the extent of the fruit loss, but it was certainly significant. Perhaps even more troubling was the weather in December when the vines began to flower and set their crop. The ideal is calm, warm, even weather. We had windy, cold, erratic weather highlighted, in the most perverse way, by hail. The result has been a poor fruit set. On the positive side, the good rains Read more …

After a winter that gifted us 14 frosts, plenty of rain and some biting, blustery weather we have broken through into an early Spring break. Whilst the drenching of warmth and the invitation to the birds to bring us musical cheer is lovely the less pleasing aspect is the vines’ buds pushing early and possibly exposing their new flush to damaging springtime frosts. We will see. There is rather a lot of news to do with new bottlings, the evolution of the 2013s in barrel as well as the important work that has begun on preparing four new vineyard sites for planting over the next four years. More about these new vineyards in the next newsletter finalising the 2012 vintage release. Also, though perhaps more exciting for us that work here rather than those buying the wine and interested in less mundane things, we have been doing some much needed works at the winery and sheds. These projects on top of the normal vineyard and winery work are certainly demanding however it’s always very exciting seeing long planned projects begin and evolve. The 2013 wines are still on yeast lees and are evolving well. Like the previous two harvests 2013 was quite reduced from the ‘normal’ crop level but the pleasing aspect of the vintage is the very good depth Read more …