這是一年一度特別忙碌的時期，而且也是特別緊張的時期.. 釀酒葡萄可以採收了！ 由於今年夏天又乾又熱，獵人谷的Shiraz 比往年更早收成。二月9日我們手摘了約50公斤，手榨成約42L（後來初級發酵期間一度上升到50L），在籃式壓榨及第一次換桶後現在剩下27L。在它的第二次發酵階段，目前對酒汁的印象是⋯ 由於天候因素，葡萄比往年糖度更高，產生了較高的17度酒精（通常可以予想約13度）。可惜的是，它似乎少了一些深度 - 幾乎感覺不到單寧及酸度。有可能是因為高糖度造成過度活躍的初步發酵，導致我們提早結束了初步發酵（4天）造成酒汁與葡萄皮接觸時間不夠，所以我們未能將今年葡萄果實的全部風味提取出來⋯接下來就要看我們怎麼挽回了！
It is a busy time of the year, and particularly nervous time too.. the wine grapes are ready! With a dry and hot summer, Shiraz at Hunter Valley were ripe earlier than usual. On FEB 09 we hand picked around 50kgs, hand crushed into 42L (which later went up to 50L during primary fermentation) and now down to 27L after pressing and first racking. In it’s secondary fermentation phase, impression of the juice so far... with the weather, grapes are sweeter than usual yielding higher alcohol at around 17% (it is usually expected around 13%). However it is somehow lacking depth - tanin and acidity could barely be detected. This could be because of the extremely active primary fermentation due to high sugar content of the grapes, that we shortened the primary fermentation (4 days) resulting in reduced skin contact thus we failed to extract the full flavor of this year’s fruit...now we need to see how we can save the wine!
