The Mongol Derby Daring Dozen

10 May 2009

Many of you will know our daughter, Matilda, from the cellar door and various events. Well, in August 2009, Matilda is taking part in the longest and most challenging horse race in the world... The Mongol Derby. One thousand kilometers across the Mongolian Steppes, on half wild Mongolian ponies, living rough and no roads to follow... To help her raise money for this event, which goes to helping the desperately poor Mongolian Nomads, we have decided to put together a special offer, The Mongol Derby Daring Dozen. Click on the links to find out more...

In a society where we stay in our comfort zones, and so many of our young people are disillusioned and disenfranchised, this is a good story of someone having a go to make life better for others who live in a very different way. So if excitement and edginess appeal to you (if not fermented mare's milk!), The Mongol Derby Daring Dozen is for you!

Matilda and The Mongol Derby

14 Apr 2009

Someone ought to tell second children that they don't have to try to prove that they are as good as the firstborn! Not content with studying Anthropology on exchange in Spain this year, in Spanish, our middle daughter Matilda has decided that she needed to do something a bit edgier... so she is racing in the inaugural Mongol Derby.
What's the Mongol Derby? The longest and toughest horse race in the world.... 1000kms across the Mongolian steppes on half wild Mongolian ponies, dodging wolves and rabid dogs... and other riders...

I'll let Tildy tell you.

"My name is Matilda Branson. I’m a 21 year old Australian student studying in Spain on exchange, and in August I’m off to Mongolia to ride 1000km in two weeks across the Mongolian steppes in the Mongol Derby, the toughest, longest horse race in the world. Riding hardy Mongolian ponies and living on mutton and mare’s milk, the race path will follow Ghengis Khaan’s original pony express changing ponies every 40km, all in the name of adventure and, most importantly, for charity.
Dubbed ‘The Mongol Derby’, it is the inaugural race organised by ‘The Adventurists’, an organisation that hosts a plethora of adventure-based rallies and races in their fight to raise money for charity (for the Mongolian nomads, some of the poorest people in the world) while at the same time creating an event to cater for the red blooded adventurers amongst us.
With only twenty-five competitors selected from throughout the world including myself representing Australia, the Mongol Derby is going to be a race like no other, an ultimate test in endurance. We have to carry all our gear - 10kg limit - food, water. No roads, no signs. Just me and the desert, and 24 other maniacs...but's it for a good cause!
Being raised on a farm in central Victoria, in the southern part of Australia, and having grown up with horses, I’m ready to race.
Tally-ho!
Matilda Branson, the Hopeful Champ of the Mongol Derby."
Matilda has to raise a lot of money to cover the cost of participation and the charity contribution, so naturally, she has turned to her parents as number one sponsors, so we thought we'd offer a special Mongol Derby Dozen to the people on our mailing list, with a large chunk of each case sold going to Matilda's assault on the derby. Stay tuned!
To find out more about the inaugural Mongol Derby, check out the following links:
Her website for the Derby is http://mongolderby09.theadventurists.com/matildainmongolia, and the email for directly giving to the charity is http://www.justgiving.com/matildainmongolia
To read more about the race itself, go here:
http://mongolderby.theadventurists.com/

New distributor for Mount Burrumboot Estate

20 Nov 2008

We are now working with Amrac Fine Wines. We are looking forward to working with the team at Amrac, and increasing our availability so that all the people who ask, "So where can we get your wines in Melbourne?" will never be disappointed! For all Trade and corporate enquiries, please call Amrac on 96863450.

2005 Vintage Degustation Dinner

4 Sep 2008

Cathy and Andrew Branson look forward to seeing our Wine Club members at our

2005 Vintage Degustation Dinner
At
Church St. Enoteca
At 7pm on 2nd October 2008

2005 Tempranillo Four stars in Big Red Edition of The Wine Magazine

22 Jun 2008

We were delighted to hear that our 2005 Tempranillo received a four star rating in the Wine Magazine's recent Tempranillo tasting. They tasted as many Tempranillos from Spain, New Zealand and Australia as they could lay their hands on, and ours was one of the ones they gave a great write up to. We were really pleased to see a great big photo of our Tempranillo, with the "Big Red" stamp on it. This wine has really been making a mark for Mount Burrumboot Estate, and establishing us firmly as a top producer of alternative varietals in the Heathcote Region. Unfortunately, we do not have much left of this wine, so order yours before it is all gone!

The BurrumBlog is Coming!

2 Nov 2007

Get ready for the Mount Burrumboot Wine Blog, or the Burrumblog, as we have dubbed it. We thought that it might be interesting for people to be able to find out exactly what it is that we do when we are winemaking. So we are getting ready to launch our own (and possibly the first ever?) Wine Blog. Don’t worry – it won’t be a boring daily blog, because to be honest, not every day here at Mount Burrumboot is spent winemaking. You can’t fiddle with wine all the year round, it needs to be left alone to mature and grow up... But be warned! It might not be the warm fuzzy read you’d like. This will be warts-and-all winemaking, cursing-your-spouse-children-weather-and-dogs winemaking, cuffs-and-jeans-rolled-up winemaking, barefoot and bare-chested winemaking... well, perhaps not bare chested. So, stay tuned, the Burrumblog is coming soon!

Tastings

2 Nov 2007

When you are a winemaker, you lose your chance to further influence the wine once it is bottled. It is often with baited breath that you come to try unreleased young wines. My previous visit to our 2005 Shiraz, Merlot and Petit Verdot six months ago were a bit anxious – the wines were tannic, alcoholic and unsettled, with the fruit quite shy, and the nose not developed. So it was with some trepidation that I recently eased the cork out of our as yet unreleased 2005 Shiraz and Petit Verdot. But my fears were groundless – I was delighted to find that these wines have matured beautifully. The Shiraz has a fantastic nose, almost slightly floral tones, with fine tannins, and very good ripe fruit characters, with some spice complexity, and long, long finish. The Petit Verdot showed the rich blackcurrent that is redolent of the variety in our vineyard, and intense ripe fruit. I had been afraid , back in 2005, that the 2005 wines might have been lightweights, owing to the heavy rain just before we picked them.

Success at Federation Square - The Little White Wine beats the Big Reds!

1 Nov 2007

During June 2007, we showed our wines at the Federation Square Heathcote Regional Showcase in Melbourne. This is a fun event, where Heathcote wineries collect to show the Melbourne public just what we are made of! The opportunity for Melbournites to taste and buy some of the best red wines in the country, made by boutique producers, without having to go seeking them, is great. The Regional Showcase managers also run a wine show for Heathcote during this event, and we were very happy to find that our wines performed very, very well, with four of our wines in the top 11.
Our white, the 2006 Marsanne-Viognier was the surprise best performer, outclassing (literally) a very strong field of excellent red wines, to be the second highest rated wine of the show, with the 2004 Merlot a close third. Other stand out performers were the 2004 Uncle Jack’s Petit Verdot and 2005 Tempranillo, close behind the other two. It was very gratifying to see alternative wine varietals doing so well in a Heathcote Show. We have always felt that Heathcote is about more than just Shiraz, and that these varieties would make great Heathcote wines as well. More and more Heathcote growers are trying some of the more exotic varietals, so Fed Square next year should be really interesting!

2007 Heathcote Wine and Food Festival - What a lot of fun!

1 Nov 2007

What a great weekend this was! The weather was fine, and there was a great turnout of wine enthusiasts, connoisseurs, sippers, swillers and sniffers! There were more Heathcote wineries there than ever before. We had all of our current release wines on show, and people really enjoyed being able to try the largest range of different wine varietals in the region.
Whilst it may be a headache at vintage time , making so many different wines, it is a great thing for festivals! Visitors were able to try wine varieties that they had previously only heard about, and we had many new converts to the Tempranillo and Sangiovese! On the Saturday, which was quite warm, the lighter Gamay was very popular, with many picnickers taking a bottle to enjoy with the Spanish and Turkish dishes available at the Festival. The 2004 Petit Verdot is a fantastic wine, and was again very much in demand – lucky those who got some, as we are almost sold out of that wine now.
One of the great pleasures of the festival is the opportunity to get out and taste everyone else’s wines; however, this year, we were just too busy at the Mount Burrumboot stand! We had a great team this year, with quite a family feel – Andrew and myself, of course, our two elder daughters, Miranda and Matilda, showing the wines, along with our Marketing Manager, Michael Hibbert, and cellar door man, Andrew Tolley. Molly, our youngest daughter, was busy running errands, and bringing back food and drinks for the hungry workers. We did miss our old friend, Kristian Eskola, who has always helped us at the festival (and at the winery), but the new team managed pretty well. Actually, according to the girls, I spent most of my time swanning around and talking to visitors, and didn’t do much work at all! Well, what can I say?
The other great pleasure of being at the festival is catching up with our loyal customers, and Wine Club members, who have become good friends over the years. And it is great to find out about the part that our humble wines play in other peoples’ lives. For example, a couple who got engaged over a bottle of our wine, had the wine at the party, and are now getting married, with our wine at the wedding.
I love stories like this. To us, the wine is a work in progress that we live with; making, racking , tasting, sniffing, and when in bottle, checking, comparing... but sometimes we forget that wine, as well as being a delicious beverage to enjoy with meals, is something for many people that marks special moments in their lives. THAT makes winemaking a special job...
So all in all, we had a lot of fun at the festival, meeting old friends, making new ones, putting faces to the names, and generally having fun. To those of you who didn’t get there, make sure you do next year!

2005 Tempranillo voted one of the best wines of Heathcote!

6 Aug 2007

The Wine Magazine rates 2005 Tempranillo one of the best wines of Heathcote!

We are very pleased to share with you the comments made about our 2005 Tempranillo in the April 2007 edition of Gourmet Traveller Wine.

“I was very impressed by the 2005 Mount Burrumboot Tempranillo. It has the plump, supple middle palate and fine-grained tannins that are so appealing with tempranillo. Caillard agreed: “Sweet fruit with strawberry, blueberry and musk plums. A touch of pencil from oak, slinky tannins and good persistance.” Hooke added: “I loved the richness and flesh. I found licorice and anise too.” Altogether a very graceful, balanced wine that should develop well over three or four years. A variety to watch!”
Nick Bulleid MW, AGT Wine Magazine April 2007

5 stars, rated 93 (one of the six top Heathcote wines).
Lovely when you get comments like these!

Vintage Report 2007

6 Aug 2007

Vintage Report 2007

Another vintage has been and gone, and once again serves to remind us that Mother Nature has no end of different tricks in her bag to throw at us unfortunate wine growers and farmers! And, boy, did she have a go this time... as if the long running drought wasn’t bad enough, widespread frosts and even bushfires tormented winegrowers all over Victoria.

Luckily, we were far from the fires, and the aspect of our vineyard is such that we rarely get damaging frosts – we were lucky, though, as just up the road in each direction, vineyards sustained considerable damage, with huge patches of the vineyards burnt off by the frost, so that once healthy green shoots were left black and withered. Any flowers on such shoots were also destroyed, resulting in much lower than expected yields in all regions.

At Mount Burrumboot, the only damage we sustained from the cold conditions was a bit of leaf deformity in the Tempranillo at the lowest point of the vineyard. We couldn’t see any damage to flowers, which was just as well, since the prolonged drought has meant that, this year, vines were self regulating their fruiting, with smaller bunches and fewer berries across all varieties. Watering was a bit tricky this year. Severely reduced water allocations meant that, although we always irrigate minimally (some would say stingily!) we had to purchase extra water to get the vines through. It is a balancing act, providing enough water to enable the vines to function at their optimum, without over watering, and stressing them enough to ensure that they are working hard to deliver the maximum flavours to each berry. Under- watered vines lose their leaves, which are the engine of the vine, and therefore their ability to ripen the grapes.

However, we got the mix right, and although the yields were about 60% lower than expected, the condition and quality of the grapes was extremely high. Being a very small vintage, it seemed to pass very smoothly, as opposed to some of the other vintages we’ve had, which are hectic to the point of ridiculous! Vintage 2007 was actually fun; it was a bit like toy winemaking, winemaking for fun! Small ferments are much easier to manage than large ones, and so it was easier to monitor, to cool, to plunge, in fact just easier all round. Certainly the barrels containing this year’s wine don’t take up much room in the winery!

The vines behaved a bit unusually with the unseasonal conditions – ripening occurred very early, just after veraison, so that most of the grape growers along the Mt Camel Range were caught short! However, high sugar levels are not what we pick on – we pick on flavours, and so it was a few more weeks before we got into vintage seriously. We started picking mid February, which is extremely early for us.

We have recently completed our mid year rack and return, and are very happy with the way the wines are developing in barrel. We have totally gone away from using American oak, as we feel that the sweet and confectionery notes do not suit our style of wine. Generally, each wine variety has about 30% new French oak, notably Sirougue barriques, 30% year old French and the rest two and three year old oak.

Wine Vareties 2007

2007 seems to have been a good year for Shiraz, Merlot and Petit Verdot in our vineyard. Great colour (as always), intense berry and plentiful, fine tannins. Some very bright dark fruit flavours, reminiscent of black current fruit pastilles – looking forward to seeing how these all develope. Acid held up better in the Shiraz and Merlot than previous vintages – perhaps this reflects the maturing vines? The Petit Verdot continued to perform like the little battler it always is – the block was all mulched with straw, and hardly any water, yet produced a good crop, with that Ribena character that I love, yet possibly bigger tannins than we’ve seen before. Sangiovese almost looked like it was going to be a non event, with these vines really struggling to retain leaves, let alone ripen fruit. We had all but given up on them, until I took a few samples, and decided what the hell, it looked pretty good to me! A lighter style than the 2006, but highly aromatic at this stage – lots of wild cherry there.

Gamay is a funny little variety. Probably quite out of its depth in some ways in the Heathcote region, it still thinks it is a world beater of a vine! Left to it’s own devices, our Gamay vines would produce 15 tonnes to the acre, instead of the 1.5 that we allow them! It is the most labour intensive vine in the vineyard, requiring shoot thinning and fruit removal several times throughout the season. However, the fruit had more intense flavours and colours than the 2006, so I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. 2005 was our first vintage of Gamay, and things looked pretty dicey with it for a while oenologically- at times during maturation, it had some quite unattractive moments, but has turned out to be a delightful lighter style of red wine than you would expect to find in Heathcote, but a lot more robust than most Gamays, yet still retains the varieties delicate aroma and raspberry/cherry fruit characters. Unusual for this region, and not much of it grown in Australia full stop, but I think it is an underrated variety, and really very special, as a lighter style, a bit Pinot-ish, great for summer drinking, but able to hold it's own with steak. Lower alcohol, too, due to it's earlier ripening.

I just love Tempranillo. With our 2005 Tempranillo being voted as one of the top 6 wines in the Heathcote Region by The Wine Magazine panel earlier this year, I am obviously not alone in this! Each year, the vines produce wine with more substance and body , and I think that the ageing potential of this wine is going to be a lot longer than I originally thought. Deep, deep ruby in colour, fantastic dark berry and licorice characters; this wine will be one to watch.
The Viognier was the lowest yielder this year, with only about 400 litres being made. Some really attractive stone fruit and citrus characters showing up, it is already bottled, and will probably be released in the Spring.

No Rose this year – the season got the jump on us, and grapes ripened very quickly, so that the sugar levels were very high, very early. Too high, unfortunately, to make the style of rose that we like to make, so we left it for next year.

All in all, a tricky year, but not too taxing on the winemaking front. But, like all growers, we all have our fingers crossed for a better season for Vintage 2008. And so far, we’ve had good rains, and the soil profile is full of moisture. If we can get some sort of irrigation allocation (a bit dubious at this stage), it looks like being a great year... but don’t they all?

"And then you taste the wines - Amazing."-James Halliday's Wine Companion 2007

18 Oct 2006

For those of you who have been following our progress over these early years in the life of our winery, you will have seen us getting some handy reviews around the place. The new edition of Halliday's Wine Companion once again gave us ****1/2 stars as a winery, and rated the 2004 reds over 90, with the Shiraz coming tops at 93. Very pleasing, for wines that we are very pleased with! Since then, these wines have improved and improved, and are showing terrific ageing ability, but with fine, palatable now tannins. The comments were great too - grab a copy and have a look.