For a start, the Riesling had been picked some time before, but there was still some fruit left on the vines, which gave an opportunity to try a grape or two. Cabernet ripens on a different schedule, and there were only a few vines in this location, so it made sense for the vigneron to pick them himself rather than delegating a paid picker to the task.
Picking the four buckets of fruit, I was informed, had saved him around $26, from which I was able to deduce that:
(a) contract pickers must get somewhere around $6.50 a bucket, and
(b) since you’re not going to get too many bottles out of a bucket that size, you’re not going to be finding too many wines made from handpicked grapes on the discount shelves at your local liquor outlet, or, if you are, that's a sign of a winery that's in trouble when it comes to moving the product through normal channels.
The grapes, which were smaller than I’d imagined or expected, not having managed to get up close and personal with ripe wine grapes in the past, revealed a surprising degree of sweetness (which makes sense on reflection, since that sugar needs to be there so it can be fermented into the object of the exercise) and the grapes were remarkably tasty, though you’d need to eat a swag if you were after a substantial feed.
Still, given the flavour, that wouldn’t be too difficult.
Between spells of feeding Shiraz into the de-stemmer I also had the chance to try some of the 2011s, which seemed remarkably advanced. I tried the Riesling, the Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, tried blending the two red varieties, and had a listen to the malolactic fermentation in a barrel revealed the Snap, Crackle and Pop widely associated with a well-known breakfast cereal.
There were also references to a wine dinner in the Burdekin or Bowen at some point in the future, though the exact details were indeterminate at that point in time.
We were also in and out of the house, which doubles as the cellar door, and the distinction between ourselves and customers became clear. Ringing Bloodwood to arrange a tasting is, to all intents and purposes, the same as booking a medical appointment, and you’re given a specific time slot rather than the turn up at the cellar door and you’re in arrangement we’ve become accustomed to.
Someone (actually a party of five) had, however, lobbed unannounced on the doorstep at the same time as a scheduled group failed to arrive, so they’d been slotted in, which in turn had the scheduled crowd and their cab driver cooling their heels in the car park while the interlopers went through the regular tasting arrangement, which is a sit around the table for a guided tour through the range, and seems to take about an hour, including the window for purchasing what you fancy at the end of the actual tasting.
It’s also obvious that what amounts to the Bloodwood cellar door doubles as the Doyle living room, though also it can serve as the Bloodwood Bistro. There’s a restaurant-equivalent kitchen on the premises, and one gathers that there’s the occasional catered dinner. The cooking facilities certainly matched those in any of the restaurant or pub kitchens I’ve encountered, and Rhonda was involved with kicking off the Orange Food Week some twenty years ago.
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