Well, we have got it all done, if not by Christmas at least by New year. All the Sangiovese is now neatly, or almost neatly, twisted onto the top wire and the Pinot Grigio tucked into it’s Scott Henry positions. Scott Henty was an engineer and viticulturist in Oregon, U.S.A. who devised his trellis system to both help control dense canopies and to maximize sunlight penetration into the fruiting zone. Our aim is to produce a crisp, fruit driven Pinot Grigio. We will pick it early while the fresh, tropical fruit flavours are to the fore and we expect the more even ripening of the Scott Henry trellis will aid us. All things being equal my viticultural experience tells me it should work but then all things are never equal, and all you can do in the end is try to get the best out of your vineyard every year, the best in the lessor years and the best in the good years. At 3 Acre Vineyard we are dedicated to doing the extra one per cent even if as in the case of twisting on the Sangiovese we sometimes wish we weren’t quite so dedicated. Ah! but it is all for the wine, so we can drink the best Sangiovese we can make and so can you.

Sometimes you just have to try something different, stretch the envelope, take a chance. It was one of the reasons for keeping the 3 Acre Vineyard small, to be able to try things. This idea isn’t mine, I first saw it at Radda in Chianti on the Poggerino Vineyard. The growing shoots of the Sangiovese are rolled onto a wine strung along the top of the posts rather than trimming, cutting the shoots when they grow taller than the trellis.

The idea is that trimming encourages new lateral or side growth and sends the vine into a vegetative cycle rather than a fruitful cycle whereas the rolled down shoots will simply stop growing and send a signal to the vine to concentrate on ripening fruit. It has the additional benefit of keeping more mature leaves to ripen the fruit, immature lateral leaves don’t help with ripening. Both good theories but, and there is a but, Chianti doesn’t have the vigour problems of the Mornington Peninsula and the job has turned out to be bigger than expected. We will have to see if it was worth it in the 2015 Vintage Sangiovese.

Twisting down the shoots.

Bud burst and flowering book-end Spring, bud burst at the beginning of spring, flowering at it’s conclusion. Bud burst and flowering are critical stages in in the yearly cycle of the vine, adverse weather, pests and disease can destroy a years crop if they strike during either. Frost during bud burst is many growers nightmare, fortunately our maritine climate means we are largely frost free, but what we make up in bud burst we loose in flowering.

Grape vines are self pollinating and while they may not need bees they do need benign weather. Grape vines simply cannot tolerate cold, wet and windy conditions during flowering. Cold, wet and windy conditions are precisely what we can experience over spring on the Mornington Peninsula. Sailors call them “line squalls” they are a pattern of weather cells which travel north from Antarctic Oceans one squally storm following another. When they arrive at flowering it can be disastrous and arrive at flowering they frequently do. This year we where lucky, the weather over early and mid-November was sunny and warm. The line squalls came in the first week of December, this week, you take your luck when you get it.

It’s looking good. I want to say, “so far so good,” because that’s how it often feels looking after a vintage. Before you are a winemaker you are a farmer, with all the farmer’s risks and concerns, but this is also where wine in made, meticulously, little by little in the vineyard, much more so than the barrel room.

Carpineto is a larger producer who have been exporting wines to Australia for some time. They are the Chianti producers I am most familiar with and I was very pleased to have an appointment at the winery in Dudda, Greve in Chianti a short twenty minute drive from Radda in Chiant and Poggerino. Carpineto produce a large range of wines from attractive Toscano I.G.T. wines to powerful “Super Tuscans”. Pia Jager was very generous with her time showing us the production facilities at Carpineto. I have always been very impressed with Carpineto’s entry range, the Dogajolo wines with their beautiful floral labels and their “Super Tuscans” the “Molin Vecchio” and “Silano” but what impressed me most in the range were the “Farnito” wines, a Chardonnay, “Yes” a Chardonnay in Tuscany, and a Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabinet blend called “Farnito Camponibbo”. Sangiovese has a similar mouth weight to Merlot and they combine well together, La Massa produces a similar blend which I equally liked. Carpeneto wines are readily available in Australia and I recommend trying them, great examples of what Chiant is all about.

Carpineto Tank farm

Poggerino Vineyard

We stayed at Fattoria Poggerino a family owned organic winery outside of Radda in Chianti. Poggerino produces a Toscano I.G.T., a Chianti Classico and a Chiant Reserva. The property is meticulously and the wines made by Piero Lanza who I met in a bottle shop in Mount Eliza, Australia and who is at least partially responsible for our being in Tuscany. Poggerino is between four and five hundred metres above sea level and as in La Massa on “galestro’ soils a combination of marl and limestone. Piero’s wines are more traditional than La Massa displaying more tannin structure and oak, they are also excellent examples of classic chianti. All the Sangiovese flavours are present; cinnamon, leather, cherry, plum, raspberry and violets, they are warm, generous wines which as in all good chianti perfectly compliment the Tuscan table.

We stayed in the old farmhouse at Poggerino which is rented out as Bed and Breakfast Accommodation, a delightful place to stay. sweeping views over the Tuscan hills with the vineyards and olive groves beneath you, and only a short drive to Radda in Chiant which is everything you might expect of a Tuscan village. Picturesque lane ways, stone buildings a village square, restaurants and traditional produce, thoroughly recommended.

We are in Chianti exploring the world of Sangiovese, for Chianti is it’s historic heartland, the place where the greatest of Sangiovese wines are grown. Chianti is an appellation region which means there are strict rules governing everything from the yields in the vineyard, the length of time the wine must be matured in barrel, and the length of time the wine must be stored in the bottle before it is sold. Chianti Classico Reserva is the highest classification and must be stored in barrel for eighteen months and bottle for six, below Reserva is Chianti Classico which spends less time in oak and bottle and below that Toscana, Indicazione Geografica Tippa, which is both the lowest appellation and the appellation with the least constrictions, an important consideration which we will see latter.

On our first day in Chianti there was a wine festival in Panzano where we could taste the wines of the “Producers of Panzano in Chianti, who over the last 10 years have transformed their region into the first “organic viticultural” region in Europe under the system “biodistretto vitivinicolo” a grapegrowing system which deserves an entire post of itself. Eighteen producers were displaying their wines at the festival and while a number of wines were very good one was exceptional. Fattoria La Massa, “Carla 6” a 100 % Sangiovese grown at 360 metres above sea level on “galestro” soil, loose marl and limestone, which had spent fourteen months in French barrels. Curiously the wine was labelled Indicazione Geografica Tippa, the lowest of Tuscan appellations. I set out to investigate.

“Carla 6” is a modern interpretation of the Sangiovese grape, a feminine wine which while generous on the palate  does not have the big leathery tannins which are typical Chianti. I expected a modern winery but didn’t expect what I found. “Ferrari” winemaking, absolutely state of the art, the sort of equipment you only expect to see in a Premium Cru Bordeaux winery, two sets of triage tables, gravity feeding of must a machine for plunging the caps during fermentations and a barrel room full of either new one or two year old barrels. This is a winery which believes in fanatical attention to detail both in the vineyard and in the winery.

I take inspiration from “Carla 6” it tells me that Sangiovese can produce a great modern wine, rich, generous and complex. 3 Acre Vineyard will use this wine as our inspiration and our yardstick. Of course we don’t have a Ferrari winery to produce it but we do have the dedication to excellence and many years of experience to compensate and our small scale is actually a help as we can do by hand what La Massa has brought state of the art machinery to do. Looking forward to getting back into the vineyard and making my wines the equal of “Carla 6”.

Pruning is chilly, although we shouldn’t complain, our maritime climate is milder than most. We don’t prune in snow, or harsh frost at worst squalls from the Southern Ocean blow across Bass Strait cold and fierce. We wrap ourselves in “Dry-as-a-Bone” jack and scarves just to remind ourselves that pruning is a winter job. It is also a time of renewal. Pruning is all about removing last years wood and replacing it with new wood. Vines produce fruit from the canes which grew the previous year and these are the canes we select to carry this years crop.

The 3 Acre Vineyard is all cane pruned. Last year we cut away the old permanent arms which had grown old and tired and replaced the old spur pruned cordons with single canes. I like the neatness of cane pruning as well as it’s flexibility. It is more work but it allows us to do things we couldn’t do with spur pruning. In the harvest of 2014 we cane cut the Sangiovese to allow some of the fruit to sun dry on the vine, a modified “Amorone” which added an extra dimension to the wine. Experimentation is one of the advantages of a small “hands-on” operation like ours we can play around with ideas, and ideas make wine, especially when they are focussed on achieving the most from our three pampered acres.