Stefano Lubiana 2012 Part 2

Stefano Lubiana 2012 Part 2

Diary note for March 14^th, 2012

Deciding on harvest dates calls for nerves of steel. For every decision a wine producer makes, risks have to be taken and hunches followed, regardless of vineyard location, and the wine grape varieties planted there.

With just 4 tonnes of fruit whole-bunch pressed and cold settled this week – and a little shower activity forecast until later next week – the choices winemaker Steve Lubiana and vineyard manager Mark Hoey face during the remainder of the month are the same ones they have to deal with each vintage.

Do you call in the pickers as early as you can – and run the risk that your grapes may not be perfectly sugar ripe and flavour ripe – or do you hang on a bit longer and hope that you don’t encounter more rain and the potential for a spoiled vintage?

Nature and the changing seasons wait for no-one. Right now, we’re going to sit tight for the next few days and see how things play out. We only need a bit more settled weather and our Pinot Grigio will be ready to go, and so too maybe some more of the Chardonnay and our first pick of the Pinot Noir. Fingers crossed…

Our 2012 vintage team is busy, busy…

Of course, waiting to pick doesn’t mean members of our winemaking team sit around passing the time away with their latest phone apps.

Assistant winemaker Pat Colombo and his itinerant internationals Gavin, Tyler and Daniel have spent the past few days de-barreling last year’s Chardonnay wines, and labelling and packaging a few hundred cases of the newly-released 2010 Estate Chardonnay.

We’ve only just moved into the new labelling and packaging room that materialised on the site over the Christmas/New Year period. Everything seems to be sorting itself out fairly well. That’s the way things usually go with a guy like Steve Lubiana carefully planning every move we make in our winery.

Also new for vintage 2012 is a state of the art fermentation management package. It’s called TankNET.

All stainless steel tanks in our winery were fitted with electronic sensors over the early part of summer. These sensors are connected to a web browser interface that enables Steve and Pat to monitor and manage all wine fermentation and storage from any location on the planet that is connected to the internet.

The technology comes with a big price tag, but is being increasingly used by hundreds of wineries around the world, including a vast number of highly-fancied producers in California's Napa Valley.

We pride ourselves on being at the cutting edge of winemaking and viticulture in Tasmania. TankNET is an innovation we’ve just got to have if we want to make the best wines possible from our 25ha of biodynamically-managed vines.

PS In coming days and weeks, we’ll be posting photos and videos of vintage 2012 on our Flickr pages. You’ll find us here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefano_lubiana_wines/

Mark Smith