Dan's Harvest Updates

Winter Thoughts

Tues 01 June 2010

My winter thoughts are mainly about food.  I’d like to think that something deep and primitive is calling me to lay down stores of energy for the coming cold months.  The scales just tell me I’m getting chubby.  In our kitchen over summer the extractor fan draws out the heat of cooking, but also the smells.  I love that first time in autumn when the additional warmth from the stove is welcomed and the fan is left off.  The kitchen becomes the coziest room and the whole house fills with the aromas of baking cakes and roasting joints.  It is a great time for wine too.  Time to ignore the simple pleasures of zippy fresh whites and pretty rosés and indulge in something with a bit more depth.  Our Family Cellar Marsanne and Shiraz are just perfect right now.  The Marsanne is a great partner to roast pork and I have yet to find a better match for local lamb than local Shiraz.  It’s the kind of food pairing that is ingrained in European culture and steadily becoming part of ours.

In the winery there is always plenty to do.  The wines from the recent vintage are being ‘put to bed’ for winter.  The analogy with getting a child bathed, settled and tucked up in bed is quite apt.  The wines may need a rack, will have to have some lab analysis checked and then be cosseted in a brimful barrel or tank to dream away the next few months.

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