What's been happening......
This year's harvest
Well, we prayed for rain for so long and finally it came...and came....and came. There is no guessing where the old saying came from "It never rains but it pours".
Although we lost our Semillon and Chardonnay in the hail storm last November we did managed to harvest some of our Traminer and the small amount we did get is quite good and selling well but there is a limited stock this year.
Many thanks to our members that came to the Members Picking day on the 6th February, we had a great day and the members need a good pat on the back for being such good sports for picking in the mud and water in some cases. The grape stomping competition was also good fun and it will probably become an annual event. All in all, although the weather looked ominous we all had a good day.
A new addition to the family....
For those of you who haven't been up for a visit for a while we have a new addition to the family....Archie who is now 10 months old and another St Bernard is very mischievious but he is very adorable. At the moment he is at, what we are calling "bootcamp", to be trained for 3-4 weeks as he is a very excitable & loving dog but not very disciplined, so hopefully when he comes back and he interacts with the public he will be a very good boy and not want to cover people with slober:) Sadly we lost Gus on New Years Eve, he was an older dog and this year would have been his 10th year, he is missed here at Sobels.
What's on the cards for this year....
Last Sep/Oct Jason spent 6 weeks overseas and spent a time working at Chateau Carsin a French winery as that is vintage time over there, it's on the border of Bordeaux and Pomerol, he is going again this year. We are looking forward to him putting some of their wine making practices into ours in 2010 as in using Verdelho again to make our Sticky but using the French technique of fermentation on lees in new oak French barrels. We have now released the new 2010 Sticky and it's selling very well.
The annual Members Luncheon will be held again this year and we have booked the 16th October as the day. An invitation to the luncheon has now gone out to all members. At the luncheon we are going to release a flagship Shiraz in honour of Kevin's great-grandfather Carl August Sobels who incidently founded Sobels Quelltaler Wines in South Australia back in 1869.
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