Brodie Estate

Hi, Welcome to our news page. I have attached a wee slide show of harvest 2010. This is an exciting time of year - watching the weather, waiting for the grapes to reach their optimum maturity. As they get nearer to being picked you can smell the grapes and so can the birds. Flocks of starlings gather to assault the nets unless they can be frightened off right at the beginning and sent on their way to some other lucky vineyard.
Picking is finished now and the grapes are almost through the fermenting stage, ready for pressing and settling in tanks prior to being pumped into barrels.We use a third new Gillet barrels from France, a third one or two years old and a third older to give the structure that we want to achieve for our wine.
This year some of the vats developed very strong fruit flavours while others gave off spicy aromas.
We chilled the grapes down to around 12 degrees in the vat and left them to soak for up to a week before innoculating them with the yeast. We used St Georges, Assmanshausen and Fermicru Syrah yeasts this year. The vats take about a week to slowly heat up and go through fermentation. Once the yeast has converted all the sugars to alcohol the fermentation is over. We allowed a few days for the vats to cool and the cap to subside. This ensures that all the flavours and tannins have been extracted from the fruit prior to pressing, settling in tanks and transferring to barrel.
Only 18 months to wait for the final result!

August 2010
Winter is the time for pruning and harvesting the olives.
It is raining and blowing a southerly gale today. Bitterly cold out there in the vineyard so no pruning today. We are about one third of the way through with about six weeks to go before bud burst. May need to get some extra help in to finish on time.
The canes are a reasonable size with plenty to choose from for laying down. This year we will lay down around 12 buds per cane. Depending on the weight of the bunches we should harvest around 12 tonnes. Last season we ended up with 7.5 tonne as the crop was down 30% on the year before due to rain and cold weather in November, right on flowering time. We hope for a better flowering this coming season.

The low yield from the 2010 vintage has produced small and intense berries with great colour and taste. The wine in the barrels tastes very promising.

We tasted the 2009 sauvignon blanc this week as well. It is maturing in oak barrels and has developed a wonderfully nutty and soft texture. It will be bottled for the summer season.

The 2009 Pinot Noir which was bottled in March is beginning to open up and we intend to release it sometime in November.

Our olives have been picked and pressed and the oil is now settling in the tank prior to bottling. This year the oil is quite green and peppery. Over the next few months it will slowly calm down. We still have some of last years oil in bottle and it is quite delicious. It will keep for another twelve months at least.