Monthly Report - August & September 2024
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Pruning Completed…
It has been a busy couple of months and one that has not afforded me the time to knock out this monthly report for solely August due to pressures of work and vines. The pruning was completed on 29 September with the final Cabernet Franc vine having its haircut – it seemed like a very busy time, but looking at the hours in the vineyard in comparison to the previous seasons, this year was completed quite quickly, all things being considered.
Pruning is a mental game; you start off very ambitious and the first hectare moves along with relative ease – but it all comes back to earth as you work away each day to try to make a dent in the remaining five hectares and it seems like a very big mountain to climb. Having pruned the vineyard for 20 years the next big achievement is the completion of the two hectares of Merlot, knowing that this variety is ready to go is always a deep form of satisfaction. But that last push to the top, “Hillary’s Step” one could say, is the Cabernet Franc which is one hectare of very woody vines that require a lot of cutting and resetting each year. That last half row completed is just such a relief – looking back and seeing everything brought back down to the cordon is just a form of bliss. At the end of the pruning, you do feel for a day or so a bit lost – that mental fixation (a bit like taking exams at university back in the day) has now evaporated and then everything else comes back into focus (lawns, emails, friends, family!) and you start making up to do lists once more.
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Clean as a Whistle
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Melbourne Batch Brews…
In mid-September Blue Poles put on a dinner in Melbourne to showcase our recently released Reserve wines as well as the soon to be released 2021 Allouran and the 2022 Shiraz. Tim and his family live in Melbourne, and they liaised with the Myrtle Wine Bar and organizing everything for me, which was fantastic, with the wine dinner taking over Myrtle’s Mezzanine floor on a cool Thursday night.
The wine dinner was great with exceptional food, wines showing well and numerous discussions with wine comrades. It is hard to list off on how good the wines were (it is a given…), but I would like to make special mention of the 2022 Shiraz that has really surprised me by its quality this particular vintage, and the 2007 Allouran which just shone at the end of the night (this wine seems ageless).
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But dear reader, with Tim being now a member of the black puffy jacket brigade and full card-carrying Melbournian officianado I would be remiss if I did not discuss the “torture” he puts me through when meeting up with him in the CBD. Let me list these infractions on “normal” behaviour that most Melbournians take as being their everyday lifestyle:
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You want to meet for coffee – of course you do, it is Melbourne – but can you just drop into a café that is adjacent to where you are standing? Absolutely not, you walk for a kilometre to a “special” café that serves beans roasted with the care of a brain surgeon operating – you order this delicious batch brew from a selection of 2-3 but only after much discussion which would be best for this particular time of day. After sitting down and taking a sip Tim will be guaranteed to say “This is not as good as last week – pretty disappointing in fact”.
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Lunch – oh the choices. Marjory and I thought Ramen on this cool afternoon could be the go with a Ramen restaurant just 50m away, and we inform Tim “this looks alright”. Of course it is not – trekking once more to the far reaches of the CBD square we find the Ramen house to best all Ramen houses. I ask dear Tim, how hot is the chilli ratings? and he says, “I have level 2 of 4, and that is hot enough for me”, so I thought it could not be that hot and it is cold outside so I will make it a little hotter and order the 4 of 4 for mine. I still have tears in my eyes just remembering the searing heat washing over me… as well as Tim’s mirth.
But apart from these minor infractions, we had a great time in the old town. Beautiful meal at Paris Go with some lovely wine from the cellar to sip along with the dishes, a couple of whisky bars, and a bit of walking and shopping that is different to the vineyard and Margaret River main drag. Plans for the next 6-12 months were discussed, and I always enjoy catching up with Yuko and Sophie (who has grown up at such a speed it scares me) – we missed William as he was off on some outdoors adventure with his school, so maybe next time I will have a chance to face a few overs in the nets.
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Farewell Clive…
Actually, it is hardly farewell Clive at all (I saw him last week and shared a few whiskies with him), but Clive Otto our wine maker for the past 12 years has retired from Fraser Gallop Estate (FGE), where we have our wines made. I was thinking of interviewing him as some sort of “closure” for this monthly report but that seemed a bit contrived, and then I thought I should work off of my dodgy memories and knowledge I have of him which have been gleaned and garnered for more than a decade (all mistakes made below are my errors and to Clive and the team, oops).
It may not be well known, but Blue Poles does not have a winery on the estate. We have our vineyard and our cellar door, but we get our wine made by a contract winemaker. This is extremely common in the region, the number of wine making facilities would be a quarter of the number of wineries (possibly less), with FGE for example producing wine for 5-6 differing wineries each vintage. We moved to FGE in 2011 with the first wine made being the 2012 Teroldego – no Merlots and Cabernet Francs were produced until the 2014 vintage, and apart from the difficult 2017 vintage Clive has tended our wines every year before and since.
My first memory of Clive was at a “Vanilla Slice” competition at the old Yahava Café location where he was one of the judges (my slice was the champion!!). Kate Morgan, his wine making assistant, was there as well and later that same year I ended up spending a day with her in Bordeaux touring around the Medoc in a rental car (2010) which was incredible, and I am truly grateful for her generosity that day. The next and most important encounter with Clive was when I was searching for a new winery to make our wines – the previous winery had fantastic owners and I had great respect for them, but the latest version of wine maker that they had hired (they had gone through four) was not a good fit for me. In fact, it was terrible, absolutely rotten. So, when I first met Clive I was on the defensive – my view of wine makers was not great and all I wanted was a “partner” in the process and not some egotistical overlord. When I arrived, Clive was in his forklift (which I soon found out was almost the only way I saw him when arriving at the winery), he jumped down and said hello and we chatted, and I thought “he’s alright” and quite likeable in that “he’s a curious cat” sort of way.
Clive Otto is a guy that everyone knows of in Margaret River wine circles. Arriving out of Roseworthy back in the late 80’s and went to work at Vasse Felix. Had a huge part in building the Vasse Felix brand up and increasing the throughput of the estate, as well as building the recognition of the wines with a series of stunners in the 90’s and early noughties that eventually landed him the Australian Winemaker of the Year gong in 2005. In a bizarre set of circumstances, he won the Australian Winemaker of the Year award and then was retrenched that very same year in favour of a young Ginny Willcock who remains in the position of head winemaker at Vasse Felix to this day (and is also a recipient of Australian Winemaker of the Year in 2012). With this enforced downtime Clive had a “gap” year and completed a vintage in Central Otago, New Zealand after leaving Vasse Felix, then arrived back in 2006 and set up the winery at FGE from the ground up.
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Clive and Kate taking the “mickey” of my barrel tasting notebook – circa 2015​​
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At FGE he has had a massive impact on the wines made at the estate, with numerous local and global awards won for predominantly their Chardonnays and Cabernets. It is difficult to pin down what it is that is done better or differently with the wines made at FGE; they do use various forms of barrel fermentation and large barrel formats, they do treat the grapes quite softly, but this does not explain why they are so successful. If you ask Clive he would say it is the grapes (and Mike the viticulturist at FGE is awesome and they do grow damn fine grapes), but it is more than that. It comes down to timing and just a sense of when things are “right”, and this is Clive’s super power I personally believe. Wine making is a form of time management and risk aversion – how to manage grape arrivals, the period of ferment, when and how to press out the must, racking barrels when required, and bottling at a moment to capture the most complete wine – all these little details that maintain the integrity of the wines without risking loss of character or soul (for a word). Clive has always had that sixth sense, which just gave the wines he has made over the decades an edge.
Plus, he is a lucky sod.
Winning wine competitions and awards is at best a lucky dip, at worst just a spin of a very large roulette wheel. Clive has a higher batting average than almost anyone in the country and you feel he is the sort of guy that wins chook raffles every weekend and does not bat an eyelid. Having been in Margaret River from the late 80’s he has accrued his house in Prevelly and bush block near town, had a family without the uprooting from wine region to wine region that many winemakers are forced into to develop their career, and had a series of assistant wine makers and winery staff that were and are really great people and good at their job, from Kate and Alessandro to Ellin and Anna, with Alex and Chris making cameos.
Vintage is when Clive and his crew work the hardest as a team, and my contact is one of dropping in and annoying them with my preferred picking schedules and requests. It has almost always been Clive on the forklift receiving fruit and setting up the destemmer and receival area, and everyone else looking after tanks and pipes and barrels and all of that myriad of work. I have never seen Clive flustered during vintage; but I have seen him annoyed (which often involves him furrowing his brow when I say I only have 1.2t or less of Chardonnay fruit), I have seen him concerned and I have seen him juggling options – but I have never seen him at a loss. Knowing almost all the staff that have worked with him, they have had a degree of autonomy to do their job without “nanny-like” supervision and because of this they have grown in their roles and become excellent wine makers in their own right – and in this game, that hand’s off approach by the head winemaker is very much an exception to the rule.
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I think the only influence I have had with Clive in the wine making arena is the way I blend our Reserves and Allouran wines – I ask for every barrel to be set out and I would then taste and rank every barrel of wine before starting a process of adding specific individual barrel components together to form the final wines. Often in a winery, blending is done around a table in the office, with selections of barrels combined into Pyrex bottles and then pipetted various ratios of each batch into further bottles for tasting and review. This compilation of barrel samples is also how they do fining trials, acid balancing etc, so it made sense. By working through our 2014 barrels with me back in 2015, Clive was surprised by the variation of the wines even between two of the same barrels and he then set in place his own form of barrel selections with Kate. This I believe may have enhanced the top wines of FGE just that little bit more over the years.
Winemaking at FGE will be now under the control of Ellin Tritt – which is wonderful to see her take up the reins after working with Clive for the past 7-8 years. Ellin and her wine making husband Conrad have settled in the area, are building their house and raising two young children – providing a continuity and addition of youth into the “salaried” wine making ranks. I sat down with Ellin just recently discussing what the 2025 vintage would bring, and like these discussions with Clive over a decade, it was very easy to see that we both have the same goals and pathways to achieve them – Blue Poles wine making is in a safe pair of hands.
But what of Clive the man? Let me provide a list of anecdotes that present a better picture than any psychological break down could:
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Upon arriving in Margaret River, Clive, good friend Mark Messenger (another wine maker) and others in the wine industry would have numerous drinks in town on Thursday night (mainly so they could have their hangover at work the following morning rather than the weekend). If their normal watering hole, the old “Arc of Iris”, was full they would park their ute on the footpath, pull out their own chairs and tables and settle in for the evening.
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After setting up a rotary fermenter in Vasse Felix (imagine a very large concrete mixer) he was above the revolving bowl when he decided to jump across the top of it one vintage. He slipped, and as the lid came around he was surely to be crushed between the railing and the fermenter – NO, scrambling up just in time with just his boot caught and it pulled off, falling the 3-4m to the floor. Down the scaffolding he went, shoe put back on and away without as much as a traumatic pause apparently!
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He has had for over 10 years, groups of people visiting the FGE winery with the Margaret River Discovery Co tour – to the group Clive has been built up to be a rockstar (with more than a little help from Sean the tour guide). Clive does his chat, gets his photo taken by the fan club and then gets back to work – to this day he still has no idea what the fuss is about, has never thought he was anything more than just a guy doing his job in Margaret River.
In the past 5 years or so I have got to know Clive much more closely as we catch up 2-3 times a month to enjoy whisky with the local whisky club as well as with our friends JG, Dawson and Woody; and the occasional game of rugby. I believe his wife Bridgette thinks I am a bad influence, but I am not sure if it is I or the man himself that guides the excesses when the mood overtakes us.
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I have no doubt Clive will be involved with various wine projects for others (possibly even us), as he fills space in the weeks, months and years ahead. Not one to lollygag, he can now open up more windows to shove his cheeky nose into and take a deep snort and see what the future may bring.
And yes, he is a lucky sod, but it has hardly ever been more deserved. All the very best my man.
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Winter walks out...
With rainfall and the heat load being such a wild ride last year, we were all hoping for a nice wet winter to top up the surrounding countryside, and temperatures kept in check and around the average (a little less heat please!). August provided us with all the rainfall we could wish for, basically 30% of our annual rainfall total fell this month and it also was nice and cool ensuring pruning was done with full wet weather gear and a Finland Beanie tightly pushed down. September was a little warmer than hoped and rainfall was skittish to say the least – but having solid rains in July and August it was not a problem to the vines as they stayed safely shut down until midway through the month providing “normal” budburst dates for the Chardonnay, Marsanne, Merlot and Shiraz.
One of the best parts of the end of winter and spring is the presence of a large flock of Baudin’s Black Cockatoos that set up shop in the area. Sitting in gum trees as a mob, they strip the gum nuts from single trees making a mess below as they wastefully chomp away to get only the tastiest portion of the nut. When flying low as a group over the house and vines it is simply them telling us it is about to rain in the next 24 hours – and they are never wrong. Dry days are when they can be heard in the surrounding forest, but never seen rolling past like bikies down a freeway. I always enjoy seeing them this time of year, they will be off around November and return in Autumn (or occasionally earlier to warn of an impending downpour in summer). Though they do occasionally chew on our new vine canes, I will forgive them as they are awesome to have around and mark out the seasons for me more clearly than any calendar.
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I saw a lot of our local Baudin’s Black Cockatoo’s this August​
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The numbers for this month and last year’s figures are provided below:
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August 2024:
Avg Maximum Temp 16.7°C
Daily Max recorded 19.5°C
Avg Minimum Temp 9.7°C
Daily Min recorded 3.5°C
Rainfall: 292.2mm
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September 2024:
Avg Maximum Temp 18.6°C
Daily Max recorded 24.7°C
Avg Minimum Temp 7.7°C
Daily Min recorded 4.0°C
Rainfall: 57.4mm
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The average maximum and minimum temperature averages for August and September were very similar overall to the values in 2023. Rainfall total for 2024 was much higher for August (wettest August since I have kept records, being double the 20 year average), but lower for September.
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August 2023:
Avg Maximum Temp 17.2°C
Daily Max recorded 22.3°C
Avg Minimum Temp 7.3°C
Daily Min recorded 1.6°C
Rainfall: 121.4mm
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September 2023:
Avg Maximum Temp 18.7°C
Daily Max recorded 27.9°C
Avg Minimum Temp 9.1°C
Daily Min recorded 0.0°C
Rainfall: 104.8mm
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Shoot Shooting…
Standing in the vines on a blustery cool day is nearly over as we are in full growth mode amongst the vines. All we can hope for at the start of this coming vintage is a “normal” weather pattern which like Goldilocks is neither “too hot nor too cold”. The first set of protective sprays will go out this month, as well as the first wire lifts in the white varieties. Wine releases will also abound with the 2021 Allouran and the 2022 Shiraz coming out mid-month – so keep an eye out for this as both wines are excellent. Also on the cards will be the barrel tasting of the 2023 vintage which was a cracker, and I am very much looking forward to this.
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As always if you have any queries about what has been written or about wine in general, do not hesitate to contact us either by email, Instagram or Twitter and we will do our very best to answer any question.
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Cheers
Mark Gifford
Blue Poles Vineyard