The Dubbo Chronicles No 12: A Day Trip to Mudgee...

Last Friday I took a much needed day off and decided to visit a town called Mudgee, about an hour's drive east of Dubbo. Mudgee is a small town known for its vineyards, cafes and more recently a small distillery. It is about 5 hours drive northwest of Sydney, which makes it a popular weekend destination with some of the city dwellers.

I drove through a few small 'blink and you'll miss them' towns on my way there. Everywhere the scenery was very rural NSW. Just outside a town called Ballimore I came across a small herd of cattle huddling under a tree for some shade. It was only 8 in the morning and already the sun was scorching...

 

Just beyond the cattle was a natural soda water spring...

I stopped to take a photo and a small video of the horrid sulphur-crested cockatoos, which swarm through the sky with shrieks that curdle your blood....

By 9am I had reached the sleepy town of Mudgee, which was quite a bit smaller than Dubbo. Here is a picture of the main street...

 

After a quick bite of breakfast at a local cafe and a walk around the town centre I headed off to the first of several vineyards, di Lusso, where I had an early lunch. I had a lovely antipasto pizza followed by a creamy chicken and tarragon pot pie, served with a glass of very nice white made from the Picolit grape. The Picolit is an extremely rare varietal from Colli Orientali in Friuli (north east Italy). There are said to be less than 100 producers of this wine varietal in the world. This is because the grape suffers from a condition known as 'floral abortion', which means that it is prone to loosing all its flowers in Spring and thus does not produce any grapes. This makes it an incredibly nonviable grape in a commercial world, especially when growers can go a couple of years at a time before getting a harvest. But, I can tell you that if you like a sweeter wine there is none more pleasant than this little drop.

 

Above and Below: The setting at di Lusso, where they serve lunch alfresco overlooking the pond. They also grow olives and figs.

Below: My pizza being cooked in a wood-fired oven on the terrace.

One of my next stops was a vineyard called Pieter van Gent. They had a very atmospheric cellar set up for visitors, and were very friendly, although none of their wines was to my taste.

Below: The unassuming exterior...

Which gives way to their dramatic cellar...

After a couple more wineries there was only time to squeeze one more in before dinner. I chose to do something different, I visited a distillery. The Baker Williams Distillery was set up two years ago and makes a variety of spirits and liqueurs. One of the owners, Nathan, gave us a guided tour and explained the distilling process to us. I learnt about 'heads' and 'tails' and triple distilling and temperature control and valves etc.

We got to try most of their spirits. I was especially interested in their whiskey, and the process of aging it. We got to try some of the 'new make' which is the new spirit that has been distilled from malted barley. It was clear and colourless, but already had a burgeoning taste of whiskey. It was quite odd sipping something that looked like vodka but tasted like scotch. We then got to try some that had been aged in American oak barrels for various times, so that we could appreciate the aging process. I must say that even though the process made much more sense to me, the demystification paradoxically made it more intriguing to me. Perhaps I will have a go at trying to make whiskey once we get our still up and running at WBP.

Above: The still head with 6 different valves and a distillate collection pipe.

Below: The still itself.

Below: The process being explained with wine and a bunsen burner.

I then had a lovely meal at The Wineglass bar and grill, at Cobb & Co Court in town before heading back late to Dubbo. So, that was my day.

Below: Sunset over the vineyard.

Craggy Range Winery and our Hawkes Bay Mini-break...

When I was home Peter and I took a mini-break down to the Hawke's Bay. It is a lovely part of New Zealand, where I spent six months as a registrar in a large rural hospital in the middle of amazing wine country. I stayed in Havelock North, a very nice township, just 5 minutes down the road from several wineries, including  Craggy Range. It transpires that it was our builder who built Craggy Range winery! Here are some pictures of the winery...

Peter and I stayed with friends that run a B&B down there, and collected four wine barrels from The Mission Estate  winery to bring home for use at Willowbrook. There are a few ornamental uses we have thought of for them...

Peter also got a one-on-one lesson on how to prune our vines this winter from an expert who prunes the vines for Villa Maria, Church Road, and Esk Valley Estates among other prominent NZ Vineyards...

There are many methods for pruning a grapewine, but the method we will use and which Peter had lessons on is known as spur pruning. This allows one to have a permanent cordon (main vine). This is the traditional French style of pruning. It allows you to grow a nice thick, visually pleasing vine and simply prune back the newly grown spurs to this cordon each year. This is in contrast to cane renewal pruning, in which the best cane left on the trunk at the end of the season is selected to become the new cordon for the following year.

Above: Vines grown with a permanent cordon.

First you select the cane you wish to become your main cordon, prune it and tie it to your main wire...

We did this last year, and so this winter we will now start to spur prune. You need to trim the cordon so that it has about seven spurs on it (at most ten)... 

Each spur is pruned back to 2 buds above the main cordon...

Too many spurs = too many bunches of grapes, which dilutes the flavour and vigour of each bunch. Each spur should be about a hand space apart...

The finished product: a trunk with a permanent cordon going each way along the wire, each side having 7-10 spurs, 2 buds long... 

Update 29 June: putting Peter's pruning lesson into practice!

Above: Vineyard prior to pruning.

Below: After.

Finished product: a beautiful cordon... 

Deadwood...

Vineyard Part Two...

Once the ground had been cleaned and contoured, my grandfather and I laid out the posts and pegged out the rows:

We then dug 3 feet down and sunk each post in, lined them up vertically with a spirit level and packed the soil around them to hold them tight:

Before the posts could be strung with the wires they had to be stayed so that they wouldn't collapse inwards with the strain or lift out of the ground. There are 2 main post staying techniques, staying them from the inside:

or tying them back and guying each post to a smaller, deeper sunken post: 

Tying them back is the more secure method, as if you stay them on the inside, the stays can act as a fulcrum if there is enough strain, and the posts can still lift out of the ground. Not wanting the visual clutter of seeing the stay poking out of the ground, we buried our stays and laid them horizontally tying the wires around their girths...

This has the added advantage that the stay is much more secure as there is a larger surface of soil holding the posts back.

Above: All the posts stayed.

Then it was time to string the wires up. We chose 3 wires, allowing us to have 3 cordons, at 1', 2' and 3' respectively. Simple stapling of the wires usually suffices. We used wind-up wire tensioners in the middle of our wires to get them nice and taut, and added a middle pole halfway along the wire to prevent sagging.

Planting and training the vines...

Above and below: The final product, 8 rows of grapes planted, mulched and tied to the wires

When planting a vine an espalier type technique is usually used to get maximum support for each vine as well as good airflow around the grapes and maximal sun exposure...

Proper training of grapevines is essential to maintain plant size, shape, and productivity. If left unattended, grapevines can become unruly, and fruiting will be poor due to overproduction of vegetation.

To start training your vine, plant it and let it grow almost unfettered in the first year. Then in its first autumn select the 6 best canes (a summer shoot that has matured and hardened off into a woody, brown cane) to train along the wires to become your cordons (a permanent extension of the trunk that is horizontally positioned along the trellis wire. Train one cane along each wire, growing away from the main trunk.

In the second autumn you count the buds on each of the spurs (the fresh canes coming off your cordon) and prune the spur back to about 3-5 fruiting nodes. These nodes will each produce one cluster of fruit. How many buds you choose depends on desired fruit load and space.

You may use different approaches for determining the number of fruiting buds. With any pruning system, at least 85 to 90 percent of the one-year-old wood will be removed during pruning. This will allow the grapevines to maintain their structure (shape), distribute the fruit load along the cordons, and enhance fruit quality. On three-year-old (or older) vines, approximately 40 to 50 buds will be kept.

Grapevines are best pruned in the middle of winter, when sap levels are at their lowest and the wood is fully hardened. During the spring remember to regularly mulch to retain moisture and decrease weed growth; and to fertilize with an all-round nitrogen based fertiliser.

Deco Debriefing...

Well, it was a great weekend. Well organised and well attended - as you can see, heaps (well over half of the people there) were in 1930-40s attire. Two Cruise ships had come in that day, bringing with them over 4000 tourists as well. Here is a pictorial synopsis of the weekend...

The day kick started at noon with the annual parade of vintage cars...

The motors provided a stunning backdrop for fashionable flappers and the dashingly dapper alike...

There were some traditional takes on Deco fashions...

and some not so traditional ones...

During the festivities, the armed forces put on several displays and performed ceremonial duties...

and military outfits were de rigeur for some...

Then the Red Checkers put on an amazing display of Aerobatics during their airshow...

They were flying mainly over the bay, I guess for safety.

The beach itself was lovely, with a clean blue sea and a display of yet more vintage automobiles...

And the amateur photographers were out in force (myself included)...

There was a swing band, called Brett's New Internationals. They were really good. Unfortunately they don't have an albumn out, but I really think they should...

During the day I became fascinated with the vintage hood ornaments / car mascots..

I can remember seeing Lalique car mascots years ago on the BBC Antiques road show and being wowed at the time. So in the afternoon I decided to make a study of some of the 200 bonnets on show. Here is a selection of my efforts...

There were also quite a few vitage motorcycles on display...

and even some traction engines...

We stayed with friends who offer boutique accomodation on the bluff hill overlooking Napier. They also run a great wine tour company called Vines and Views. Definitely the friendliest and best value tour of the Hawkes Bay Viticulture tours, run by Ross, who has worked in the viticulture industry for years.