Barossa is buzzing in the midst of vintage. It’s an exciting time to be in and around the region, although a vast majority of residents are heavily involved in this process of vintage. Whether that be pickers, viticulturists, harvesters, cellar hands, winemakers, admin staff, bottling line attendants or truck drivers; they all play a crucial role in ensuring the vintage season continues around the clock, as planned.
While it’s an exciting time of the year, it certainly does take its toll on the entire family. Vintage means early mornings and long days at the vineyard for Andrew. He’s called out at all hours of the day or night so there is no such thing as ‘routine’. While this is part of the package deal, with three young kids we try hard to maintain family life as best we can.
The kids love their visits out to the winery to see dad and to see the winemaking process in action. We often come with food for Andrew, enjoying a family meal at the winery instead. Our three little ones are at the ages that they have a question for almost everything and love getting in the thick of it to help dad out and get their hands dirty.
Andrew might make a winemaker out of one of them yet!
So far, vintage has been off to a slow start due to the cooler weather recently. It’s slowed the ripening process, meaning we’ve had to hold off picking a few varieties that we would normally have processed by now. However, this longer ripening period has been great for flavour development.
We are picking the Grenache imminently and we are hoping to have picked the shiraz within the week as well. The quality this season is brilliant, however this year has certainly presented a range of challenges for so many wine producers across the state. We’ve had to contend with warm climate, minimal rain, unseasonal cool evenings and limited fruit meaning we have been unable to source from some of our regular growers.
But never fear, we’re always finding a way to turn things around. Where we haven’t been able to source from several growers, we have instead found some small parcel, old vine Grenache and Mataro from other regions. And we are really excited about playing and creating some special with this.
While we don’t want to say too much too soon, we are hopeful that this season we are also going to work with a new, alternate white variety… Watch this space, there’s new and exciting wines on the horizon for Quin Wines!
Andrew & Skye Quin
