Winter 2004
Dear Friends,
Just before I left for a sales trip to North America, I assured our winery staff that because January had been so cool there would be no way that vintage would start during the month of February. While we (my eldest son William accompanied me on this latest trip) were freezing in Chicago at minus 30 degrees it was 40 degrees plus in the Barossa and vintage actually started two weeks earlier than expected. This extremely early start was then followed by weeks of mild weather and while this newsletter is being written we are still pressing the last of the 2004 ferments and just to complicate things we are bottling the 2004 Rosé at the same time.
We have recently completed a new air conditioned warehouse at our Bethany site. This new space now allows us to store all of our barrels on site and will also be used to house the mobile bottling plant. While we were building the new barrel store we installed four large rainwater tanks to collect the water from the roofs. We now can run the entire winery on rainwater and do our bit for water conservation.
The new Rosé package, introduced in 2003, has been a great success, no corked wines and the Rosé maintains its freshness for longer under the screwcap closure. These bottles were developed by us and manufactured at a specialist glass works in France about 2 hours north of Paris.
Whilst we continue to export to many countries we have only recently added New Zealand to the list and so far sales have been very encouraging.
We are already well into winter and post vintage mode and the wines are being racked and tucked away into their barrels, the winery is being cleaned after vintage, autumn leaves have all but fallen from the vines and the pruning has started for this year. Vintage 2005 will begin in about 37 weeks from now!
h3. Wine Show Awards
Over the past year we have been selectively entering the odd wine show and tasting and listed below are the past years results:
2001 Shiraz: Won first prize in the Great Australian Shiraz Challenge. This is an annual .Shiraz only. show and our 2001 Shiraz came first out of 253 Shiraz entries from around Australia. The 2001 Shiraz also received a Gold Medal in the Barossa Wine Show.
2001 Cabernet Sauvignon: Won Gold and the AP John Coopers Trophy for the Best Dry Red, Cabernet Sauvignon at the Barossa Wine Show. It also won a Gold Medal at the Adelaide Wine Show, only missing the trophy for the best wine of the show by 0.3 of a point.
2002 Marsanne Semillon: This wine was chosen in James Halliday's Top 100 for 2003.
These results show that our policy of restricting vineyard yields and making better wine each year is working. If any of our vineyards show excessive crop levels at veraison, we selectively thin these vines. to reduce the yield and concentrate the vines efforts into the remaining bunches.
The famous and controversial American Wine Writer Robert Parker was shown a selection of our wines last year. Whilst we do not aim to make our wines specifically for Mr Parker.s palate, he likes our style. A selection of his points are as follows
2001 Butchers Block - 91 points 1999 Butchers Block - 92 points 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon - 92 points 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon - 90 points 2001 Grenache - 90 points 1999 Grenache - 91 points 2002 Marsanne Semillon - 86 points 2002 Rosé - 90 points 2001 Shiraz - 93 points 1999 Shiraz - 90 points 1998 Shiraz - 93 points
This newsletter is too small to include all of Mr Parker.s comments but he concludes by saying .These are very impressive, somewhat underrated wines that merit serious attention..
h3. ORDERING INFORMATION
Your details will be automatically updated on our mailing list upon receipt of your order. For those of you who would like to remain on our mailing list but do not wish to order this year, please write your name and address on the back of the enclosed reply paid envelope and return to us, or send us an e-mail.
You can order online at @ www.turkeyflat.com.au and follow the links to the ordering page.
Cheers!
Peter & Christie Schulz