MOUNT MARY VINEYARD NEWS

'88 Quintet - Terence Kwan

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 02:23:00 +0000

Thanks to Terence for sharing the following notes with us.

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Just wanted to let you know that we shared a bottle of '88 Quintet with some old friends over the weekend. The wine still had oodles of life. Colour was still a deep ruby with garnet edge. Dominant flavours were in the red berry spectrum with raspberry and blackberry dominating. Secondary characteristics included earthiness, hints tobacco/smoke, some vanilla and cedar. The wine was in great condition and was drinking very well.
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Terence Kwan is a long-standing mailing list client from Sydney, Australia.

'98 Quintet - Sin Kwok Chi Nero

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:03:00 +0000

We were very pleased to receive the following tasting notes from Nero Sin.

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23rd May 2011

Last night, I had a bottle of 1998 Quintet and I am pleased to share my personal tasting note with you.

The smell was excellent and showed a very traditional style of Quintet. It is one of the most complex and well balanced Quintet I have ever had, very outstanding finishing and clean like water.

Best vintage so far. Very good drinking now.

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Sin Kwok Chi Nero is one of our dedicated mailing list clients from Hong Kong. Whilst studying in Melbourne, he visited us in 1999 and it is great that he continues to remain in touch via email.

Notes on the 2011 Vintage

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Tue, 31 May 2011 23:25:00 +0000

Now that the wines from 2011 are safely in barrel the difficulties and stresses of the vintage seem a distant memory. It was the wettest vintage on record here at Mount Mary, requiring greater vigilance and persistence than most years. The risk of major crop losses was very real at several stages of the season. Unfortunately for some producers crop losses were a reality, brought about by various doses of bad luck, bad timing or lack of resources.

Throughout the season, the frequency of heavy rain events compounded the potential damage. Each time the vineyard began to dry out, we’d be hit by another deluge before we could take advantage of the improved conditions. It was not until the entire crop was safely in the winery that we could finally relax. In the end, disease losses were minimal thanks to early intervention, more intense canopy management and a tighter spraying cycle. Where small patches of rot had infected the fruit we relied heavily on our great team of pickers to drop the offending bunches onto the ground, instead of into the bucket.

First impressions, wine by wine...

Triolet
The flavours are well and truly showing in each of the Sauvignon blanc, Semillon, and Muscadelle. They are very tropical, floral, and aromatic.

Chardonnay
As per the Triolet, this wine is very aromatic. It has quite strong but fine phenolics, it is looking as good as any vintage. We picked a small amount from the first of our new plantings of Chardonnay and are pleased to report the batch looks great, and is typical of the site and clone.

Pinot noir
Deep colour won’t be a feature of the 2011 Pinots in the Yarra Valley, however this has never been our highest priority, preferring to concentrate on the aroma and balance of our Pinot, and in this respect things are looking good. We also picked a small amount of Pinot from the new vineyard, which will be easier to assess once malolactic fermentation is complete.

Quintet
The Quintet varieties have performed extremely well, particularly Cabernet sauvignon. A week or so of good weather around Easter rounded off the Cabernets beautifully, resulting in perfect ripeness at less than usual sugar/alcohol levels. This is exactly what we aim for.

- Mount Mary Team

Mount Mary Vineyard Newsletter - 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:22:00 +0000

Coinciding with the completion of a long and interesting harvest, the 2011 Newsletters have now been sent to all members of the mailing list. An electronic copy is available here or you can visit the newsletter archive.

To enquire about joining our mailing list, please contact Liz via email (liz@mountmary.com.au).

Video: The Harvesting Process 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:09:00 +0000

An overview of the entire process of harvest.

Photos: First days of the 2011 harvest

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:47:00 +0000

Video: Netting 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 02:16:00 +0000

Here's a short video to demonstrate how we set up the nets prior to vintage.

Updates to the Website

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 23:16:00 +0000

Although similar in appearance, you may have noticed that the Mount Mary website has undergone some important changes over the last couple of months. As well as adding up-to-date information, we hope that some small alterations will make the site easier to navigate and stay in touch.

The homepage is simpler now and hopefully far easier to find what you’re looking for! The “Our History”, “Our Environment”, “Our Team” and “Gallery” pages have all received updates with the most recent information. You’ll find vertical tasting notes on each of the wine pages. Use the drop-down list at the bottom of each page to reveal notes on that vintage.

We are very pleased to say that the entire history of the Mount Mary Vineyard Newsletter is now available in PDF format via the “Our Newsletter” link.

Finally, you will have noticed a few headlines of our news posts appearing on the home page. This is the latest snapshot of our recently established “News Blog”, which we will be updating from time to time with photos, videos and talk of current happenings at Mount Mary. Be sure to check up on the latest posts and make use of the “Comments” space to chime in on anything of interest.

Regards,

The Mount Mary Team

Photos: Flooding & Young Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:34:00 +0000

Photos: Kookaburras and Tawnies

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:24:00 +0000

Photos: Harvest 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:08:00 +0000

Revegetation

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:32:00 +0000

Many native trees and shrubs have been planted over the past decade. Much of this material has been propagated on site from locally collected seed but more recently, plants supplied through Melbourne Water’s stream frontage program have been established. We are proud to be a part of the co-operative re-vegetation of the Olinda Creek which will play an important part in improving the quality of water carried to the Yarra River from the township of Lilydale. We intend to continue to revegetate Mount Mary’s outlying paddocks and the floodplain indefinitely and also to improve the property through weed control and the establishment of wetlands.

Closures and the Environment - David Middleton

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Thu, 27 May 2010 23:15:00 +0000

The following is in response to "The cork, screwcap and diam debate", posted by James Halliday on May 24th 2010:

You are quite correct James, to point out the existence of random oxidation. Indeed, this very problem, along with TCA, was the reason we switched closures. Neither of these problems are an issue for us now, thanks to DIAM.

I must take issue with many comments being made regarding carbon footprint and environmental acceptability. You contend that aluminium production is more environmentally acceptable than cork production particularly with regard to carbon. I disagree.

During your trip to Portugal you were interested and observant enough to make an assessment of the energetics of cork production and judged it to be highly energetic. Perhaps you should apply the same level of investigative enthusiasm to Victoria’s aluminium smelters. I wonder if your independent assessment would agree with the figures provided by the government and the industry itself.

The debate over closures and their footprints has been clouded somewhat by disagreement over the relative incidences of oxidation and TCA (and both in the same cork for that matter). It is also clouded by disagreement as to how much oxidation is good and how much is too much. I accept the premise that the two faults in combination explain the 5-10% failure rate that we have all suffered. As I have said in the newsletter, we await the improvement of natural cork quality. I anticipate that this will lead to a significant drop in the failure rate. The following comments are made on the assumption that this will be the case sometime in the near future (we remain hopeful).

Firstly lets consider aluminium production. To produce one tonne of aluminium you need 2 tonnes of alumina (Al2O3). To produce those 2 tonnes of alumina you need 4 tonnes of bauxite. Bauxite occurs naturally in the far north of Australia and must be transported all the way south before the process can even begin. At this stage cork is still a live and growing tree. I am not going to bother mentioning the additional materials (there are a few) which must be imported into Australia before we begin, or indeed, the large amounts of energy (and carbon) required to mine bauxite, OR indeed again, the energy required to deal with the toxic by-products (there are many). Some of the other ingredients come from places even further away than Portugal (and we still haven’t started yet).

Aluminium production requires enormous amounts of electricity (25 megawatt hours per tonne) and with respect to greenhouse gas production, aluminium is worse than agriculture by a factor of 5 per dollar contribution to our economy. Aluminium production is well known as a highly energy intensive and highly polluting industry. We must take into account the numerous toxic entities that are by-products of the process, the thousands of tonnes of toxic waste from the pot linings that are stored on site and the fallout of fluorine containing compounds onto pasture and their passage into the food chain (the fluorosis I mentioned in our newsletter). We must also consider the brown coal that must be burnt to produce the electricity needed in the first place. I can’t believe we are having this debate, doesn’t anyone else have google?

But lets focus on the closures themselves and their relative footprints. To produce 1000 corks requires 20 MJ of energy. To produce 1000 screw-caps requires 430 MJ of energy. This is a factor of 20 and the figures even include provision for the plastic capsule on the corked bottle. Coming back to greenhouse gases, cork production contributes -3500 gCO2 eq. per 1000 closures (yes, that is a minus in front). Screw-cap production contributes +37000 gCO2 eq. per 1000 closures. The differences are so great that the debate is ridiculous.

I suppose toxicity should rate a mention too. There are many toxic components utilised and produced in the production of aluminium. Not all are easily disposed of or recycled. Aren’t we generous in giving aluminium workers the opportunity to expose their bodies to these toxins on our behalf? Cork production on the other hand involves very few (if any) toxic components and we begin with a forest which provides a resource that is constantly replenished!

Aluminium is indeed toxic. Aluminium toxicity is present in Australia just as it is all over the world and in spite of James’ suggestion that is not as dangerous as asbestos, the impact of aluminium on health is significant and as yet, far from well understood. There is no known need for aluminium in our bodies yet it accumulates in bone, brain, liver, heart, spleen and muscle where it causes a range of diseases mild, serious and fatal affecting humans of all ages. These conditions include osteoporosis, anemia, non-healing bone fractures, dementia, mutism, seizures, growth retardation in children and skeletal deformities of various sorts. Aluminium kills brain cells. Not only that, it accumulates in brain tissue with a half-life of 7 years! Some of the health impacts may be subtle but they are far from insignificant. The link between aluminium and degenerative brain conditions including Alzheimers Disease was published in the scientific literature as far back as 1988. Since then the exact nature of these pathological processes has remained unclear. Funny thing is that the longer we take to work this out, the less brain power we will have to work it out with! Can you remember where you left the aluminium saucepans? Don’t get me wrong, I am not (yet) recommending closing down the aluminium industry as it is an extremely versatile and abundant metal. The problem is the stuff is dangerous and the production process is environmentally and biologically costly.

In short, the less aluminium smelting we do, the healthier we will be.

In all respects except one (wait for it) cork wins the environmental championship by a country mile with the poor old screw-cap back at the start, upside down, on the side of the track, stuck in the woolly weeds. Water usage is the only measure that the screw-cap wins on and if you don’t put a plastic capsule over your cork you can’t claim that either! Anyway, each to their own, lets ponder while we stroll, you in your aluminium smelter and me in my cork oak forest.

James also challenges my comments with regard to copper. He claims that little, if any, copper is added to wine and that no added copper ends up in wine. I disagree.

I suspect that the supply of copper sulphate to wineries has paralleled the rise of the screw cap. In fact, the Australian Wine Research Institute itself observes that copper additions immediately prior to bottling are on the increase. Some added copper (but by no means all) is removed by various means. If the remainder isn’t in the wine, then where is it? There are a number of cases of elevated copper levels in wine on the public record and some of these are high enough to push the drinkers daily intake of copper over the WHO recommended maximum daily allowance. A little copper is good for us (essential in fact), too much is toxic. If we have to debate this then lets measure copper in wine and lets require winemakers to declare the amount of copper they add and to estimate the amount of copper removed. Any takers? All wine producers have a responsibility to protect the health of their customers with regard to the wine they are offering for consumption. This implies that known toxins be minimised and toxic levels of other substances be reduced to safe levels. We also have a responsibility when choices are to be made, to choose options that are less environmentally damaging. A good start would be to scrap the cap.

Kind regards,

David Middleton.

CEO/Owner Mount Mary Vineyard.

Photos: Release 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:37:00 +0000

Photos: Harvest 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Black Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:44:00 +0000

February 7th 2009 – temperatures in excess of 48 degrees Celsius and gale force winds from the north west. This day followed almost a week of extreme temperatures and drying winds. Mount Mary lost 50% of its Pinot and Chardonnay crops from heat shrivel in just 3 days. The fires were about 3 km away and approaching at great speed before the wind change drove the firestorm to the north east causing unprecedented loss of life and damage to property. The entire population of Victoria was affected in one way or another by this one momentous climatic event.

'81 Cabernets - David Tribolet

noreply@blogger.com (Mount Mary Vineyard) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:46:00 +0000

David Tribolet, a long standing mailing list client of Mount Mary, purchased a 750ml 1981 Cabernets on the secondary market. David chose to share the wine with us and turned up to our weekly staff gathering with the bottle in hand. We were all amazed at how freshly the wine presented and how well it had aged. In spite of the numerous production improvements that have been made in the intervening years such tastings remind us that John Middleton certainly had the capacity to produce great wines of effortless longevity after only 5 years in the business! Full tasting notes on this wine can be found on the Quintet page.