The Aussie spirit shines through

Up until February, the local newspapers were stating how wonderful the 2009 vintage was looking. Within a matter of days South Australia was in the midst of more than a week of scorching temperatures that sometimes hovered around the mid forties. People were dying from heat stress, the wildlife was suffering and the grapes were shrivelling. Bad tempers became the norm and anyone who had to work in the vicious middle of the day sun was thinking about which part of Australia (that didn't have such horrid summers) they were going to move to. All in all, there was not much to be happy about and a lot to grizzle about.

But then something happened. Well quite a few "somethings" - almost 400 bushfires in the beautiful state of Victoria in one weekend. Victoria is one of my favourite places in the world and for many years I have dreamed of living up in the high country, surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of magnificent native vegetation which is covered in snow in winter. Yes, a magnificent place to live and a lifestyle hard to beat. Until a bushfire. Tragically, on most occasions these days bushfires are not caused by nature but by the lowest form of humanity, arsonists. But that is another story and not a tangent I want to go on at this time. It simply makes me too angry.

The point is that here in the Barossa there were many people in the wine industry who were in despair at the heat damage to their crops but seeing photos of wineries burnt to the ground or aerial photos of vineyards which were now nothing more than a blackened pile of ash certainly puts things into perspective. We have our homes, our friends, our familes and some shrivelled grapes. How lucky are we? Incredibly.

Summer is not over and no doubt South Australia will still have its share of worry regarding fires but hopefully we will be vigilant and pay even more attention to cars parked on the sides of roads on hot windy days. It's the Australian way to help each other when the going gets tough. And that is why I and most people I know have made donations to the Red Cross. It's the least we can do. So far over AU$30 million has been donated but they are going to need more as entire towns have been destroyed and people have lost everything.

For anyone reading this blog who has not yet made a donation you can get to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal here and here is another link well worth visiting: Sam the Koala

The second link above will show you an article on our new national icon and features one of the most tragic yet beautiful photos that sum up the true Aussie spirit! Let's hope that the families and communities affected will be able to return to some form of a normal life soon and that through all of our support we can somehow ease their pain.

New reviews from Philip White

The weather is a scorching forty one degrees celcius outside and I am not in a hurry to leave the computer, nor the air-conditoned room, for any reason. So it appears that the best way to spend my afternoon is to update my blogs, answer emails and print off any new reviews. So, in that respect, even though neither wines are officially released (both wines will be released after vintage ie March or April 2009) here are the latest reviews. It is our first review for our 2006 Shiraz and the second for our 2008 Riesling. Both reviews have been written by Philip White. You can read his wine blogs here: Drankster and Drinkster.

Karra Yerta Flaxman's Gully Eden Valley Barossa Riesling 2008

$20(?); unlabelled pre-release bottle; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points

Alsace. Germany. Tasmania. High Barossa. Who cares? Honey and nuts; gewurztraminer and roses; spicebox and creme caramel: you'll find all these sorts of delicioso swimming round this bowl. It's not the austere crisp rapier some earlier Karra Yertas have been, but it's rich and wholesome, like some of the more Germanic rieslings made in the Barossa in the sixties and seventies, and what I imagine Petaluma tried to do sometimes during the eighties. The flavour has lovely honey as much as lemon and lime: not exactly sweet, but with an illusion of sweetness as much as your actual unfermented sugary juice. The aftertaste is a tantalising tumble of spiced mead, citrus pith, dried apple, lemon blossom and dry stones. It's like a serious spatlese riesling fermented dry. It'd be perfect with a creme caramel flavoured with a tiny squirt of lemon and garnished with citrus rind; or King George whiting fillets wrapped around a little squirt of prawn mousseline in beurre blanc. Savvy?

Karra Yerta Flaxman’s Gully Barossa Shiraz 2006

pre-release unlabelled sample; ??% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points

The stony, barren ridge at the top of Flaxman’s, where the ancient rocks poke through high above the Barossa, is the home of some of the world’s most expensive and elusive shiraz wines. (Think Ringland, next door. McLean’s Farm at the northern end; Mountadam at the southern.) This vineyard is windswept and wild, freezing in the winter, and even cool at night in the midst of the most vicious heatwaves. So this rare tincture has quite a lot to live up to. It has the most intense and complex bouquet, riddled with twists of beauty that seem so blacksmithed into compression they unwind in a dreadfully gradual and teasing manner. Musk, lavendar, violets, licorice, mint, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver, blackcurrant, blackberry, beetroot, morel, porcini, ancient soy, salt, schist, podsol, guano, gunpowder, swarf, burlap ... I dunno. I could go on, and I’ve only had my hooter in the glass for thirty minutes. I know now that this wine is gonna be a king hell striptease viper with a voice like Barry White and Grace Jones for a Mum. The palate’s disarming and confronting from the first sip: just mildly viscous, especially compared to the intensity of its flavours, with, yep, the lithe form of the black whipsnake slithering around your mouth like some professional girls apparently dance on poles. It’s strangely compact and intense, as I’ve said too many times, but still seems ethereal in its saucy habit of letting little shots of its myriad components just go: they’re there for a flash as they evaporate, and suddenly they’re replaced by something else. And on and on it goes. The dance of the hundred and summit veils. Sometime a long way off all these bits and pieces will assimilate and homogenise and the damned thing will be mature and formal and very, very famous, and those astonishing components will let go at the same time in equal proportions and really, really gradually, but shit, that’ll kill people, and by Bacchus I love it now. I doubt that I can stay alive long enough to drink it at its peak, and if I did, it’d kill me anyway. Karra Yerta has never hit the top ten in the glambam gobstopper any price you like stakes, but it will, and it will outshine most of those wannabeez and cooderbeenz. This is a stunning, secret wine. Gimme! JAN 09

Fantastic Plastic??

I read an interesting article today on how some wineries are choosing to put their wine into plastic bottles. In my opinion it certainly raises a debate between the benefits for the environment versus the benefits (or lack of) for our own health. There is no doubt that using glass bottles is environmentally taxing (in actual production of the glass and indeed with weight/freight/petrol consumption) hence many wineries choice to change from heavy bottles to lighter ones. Of course, human nature still leads us to think that heavier bottles mean a better quality wine. Realistically, in 2009, this is definitely not so.

In the media over the past few years there have been numerous articles on the dangers of (PET) plastic bottles and their alleged carcinogenic chemicals that taint and poison any liquid in them. I prefer to drink out of glass bottles for a number of reasons.

The first reason being that I tend to believe that plastic bottles are not completely safe, and secondly everything tastes better out of glass as opposed to plastic. And I mean EVERYTHING. Beer, wine, water, soft drinks, milk, juice... I absolutely hate going to a football match and having to drink beer from a plastic cup. Actually, I even hate beer from a can. For me, the only way to drink beer is cold and in glass. I may be surprised in the future but for now, I prefer my wine the same way (well, not cold unless I have a glass of riesling on a hot day).

The article states that ideally, plastic bottles are for wine to drink now and not store long-term (recommended storage is only two years). As most of the wine that James and I purchase or produce is not for relatively immediate drinking, I cannot forsee that we, as consumers, would be big fans. Time will tell I suppose but I would much prefer to see wine bottles utilised in a more long-term environmentally friendly way and the bottles simply washed and re-used for things other than wine. Stelvin (screw-caps) are fine to re-use but by far the best and most visually aesthetic would have to be Henschke's latest innovation.

Yes, I can almost see my kitchen shelves full of home-made tomato sauce or proper lemonade (made with real lemons from my garden) all standing magnificently in rows, with their classy top hat of a Henschke glass-stopper. Now, if only I could save enough money to buy a bottle of Henschke for every day of the week for the next month, I would have enough bottles to start.

Things do TASTE better from glass. I am not against producers becoming more sympathetic to the world's environmental problems but I think that until PET packaging has passed the test of being safe long-term, the best option is to simply use lighter bottles as it is a benefit to the environment AND to our health, and not either or.

To read about the "experiment" of packaging wine into plastic bottles click on this link: "Vintners give plastic bottles a try"

I am interested to hear anyone's thoughts on this topic so please feel free to make a comment on this post.

New Year news

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! 2009 is almost here and is sure to be a year of surprises. The first lot of news I would like to announce is a group venture that Karra Yerta Wines is involved in and will be a lot of fun.

Announcing: Collective

Collective is a new group of passionate Barossans (Gumpara Wines, Karra Yerta Wines, Kurtz Family Vineyards and Smallfry Wines).

Thirty different Barossa and Eden Valley wines will be showcased by the four boutique producers whose ancestors were some of the original Barossa settlers in the 1840's. Lunch is available at The Clubhouse and you are welcome to drink any wine purchased from the tasting whilst dining.

At: The Tanunda Clubhouse, Tanunda (Barossa Valley, SA)

On: Saturday 24th January 2009 (Australia Day long weekend) from 11am to 4pm

Enquiries/bookings: Mark 0419624599, Steve 0418810982, Wayne 0412153243

Please email me at karrayertawines@gmail.com for more details or give one of the guys a call on the numbers above. It should be a great day.

A friend and a gentleman

The wine industry is one of the toughest games to be in at the moment, and by the look of the current state of the market, things are not going to improve for a long time. Some days I wonder if it is all too tough but then something always happens to make me realise that all the hard work is worth it. Since starting our tiny little winery I have made many new friends and gotten back in contact with many old ones that I had lost touch with over the past years.

One of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of meeting is a gentleman by the name of Bill Biscoe. When I first met Bill, he was working at the cellar door of Penfolds at Nuriootpa. As both of my parents were employees of Penfolds for around twenty-five years each, I felt quite at home chatting to Bill whilst tasting some of the fine Penfolds range of wines.

It was during one of these visits that Bill and I began discussing our mutual admiration for Eden Valley Rieslings and to cut a long story short, we became friends. I find his unwavering encouragement to be a continual source of inspiration when times are tough. In fact, he is one of the very special people whom our latest (as yet unreleased) wine is dedicated to.

We were absolutely chuffed to have Bill, his lovely wife Jan and nine members of his family visit us last weekend for an informal afternoon of sharing bottles of wine in our lovely old stable on the occasion of Bill's 70th Birthday. My husband James had worked tirelessly to have our restored car ready to pick Bill up from his home in Angaston and bring out to our property via the scenic route past the Kaiser Stuhl Conservation Park. Bill was very happy indeed and we enjoyed being able to do something extra special for him on his birthday.

These are the moments that James and I love about having our own business - to be able to have good friends visit us and enjoy the simple things of life - the company of nice people, good food and good wines. Life is too short and we all tend to work so hard that we forget to have fun. We are definitely not your "usual" Barossa winery people - we are country people who open our home to friends and simply like to share our passion for what we do - make miniscule amounts of what we think is terrific wine. To have guests visit us and see them drive off with a smile of their face really does make it worthwhile, and that is what makes the hard times worth it.

Happy Birthday Bill!