Australian National Balloon Championships
CANOWINDRA CHALLENGE
Australian Hot Air Balloon Championships 9-17 April 2011
MEDIA RELEASE
Canowindra proves again that it is the Balloon Capital of Australia after securing the bid
to host the 2011 Australian National Ballooning Championships.
The National Championships is the premier event in the ballooning event calendar in
Australia and it will be the first time it is to be held in Canowindra since 1988.
Graham and Jan Kerr, from Balloon Joy Flights and Toms Waterhole winery submitted the
bid in June this year are no strangers to organising balloon events, having hosted the
inaugural Canowindra Challenge in April this year.
The Championships will be held from April 9-17 inclusive, and is expected to attract over
two dozen balloons over the two weekends starting the Easter school holidays and
finishing four days before Easter 2011.
There will be plenty happening in Canowindra during this time, for competitors and
spectators alike, with the major regional festival Orange FOOD week from 8-17 April in
full swing. One of the highlights is the Orange FOOD Week 100 Mile Dinner held on
Monday 11 April, an outdoor banquet for hundreds of diners, with live music right in the
main street of Canowindra. Dinner bookings are in high demand, so if you would like
further information or to pre-register contact Graham and Jan Kerr on
balloonjan@bigpond.com.
The number of crew and officials needed to participate in this event will see over 180
people staying in Canowindra for the entire event, with extra balloons and crews for the
Canowindra Challenge, and unknown numbers of visitors who will come to sightsee.
Jan is excited by organising an event such as this, “The biggest challenge for Canowindra
with the hosting of this national event will be accommodating all the Championship
people, as well as those here for the Canowindra Challenge and the spectators.”
With the support of all Canowindra community groups, including the Business Chamber,
the Kerrs will ensure that the event will be another ballooning spectacular. There will be
many benefits for the community as an estimated two dozen balloon teams will be in
town for the week, increasing the publicity and profile of Canowindra significantly.
World renowned Competition Director Mathijs de Bruijn has agreed to direct the 2011
Australian Balloon Championship. Mathijs was the director of very successful 2009
Nationals in Benalla, Victoria and will be coming to Canowindra after his tour of duty in
Debrecen, Hungary early in October this year as the World Championship Competition
Director.
Graham explains, “Mathijs is the king pin of the ballooning world. He will build the team
of officials and set the tasks for each day. These tasks will test pilots’ skills and abilities to
find the champions, of whom the top two Australian entrants will continue on to the
World Championships in August 2012, to be held in Battle Creek Michigan USA.”
Mathijs is in great demand throughout the Hot Air Ballooning World and has recently
served as Director of major events in the four corners of the world, including Lithuania
(1st European Women’s), South Africa (Championship held in Bethlehem SA in May)
and Brazil. He is an active competition pilot himself, competing in the 2010 Dutch
Nationals and flew an Australian balloon at the Balloons Over Waikato event in New
Zealand in March.
Obviously there is a lot of work ahead and a lot of scope for people to be involved in
the organisation and helping out at all levels. A successful meeting of over two dozen
people met informally last week to gauge local support and explore the many tasks
needed to ensure a successful event. It was resolved to publicise these tasks and call for
expressions of interest from any and all locals who may be able to help in some way.
For more information or to get involved in the organisation of the 2011 Australian
National Ballooning Championships, please contact Jan Kerr on 02 6344 1819.
- ENDS -
Canowindra Challenge 2011
Canowindra has just been announced as the host town for the 2011 Australian National Balloon Championships. The event will run from 11th April to 20th April 2011. This is during school holidays and leads into Easter. Official sanction has been granted to The Organisers Graham and Jan Kerr and their company Balloon Joy Flights by The Australian Balloon Federation the national organisation controlling Australian ballooning.
Read More...Sunday lunch
Toms $15 Winter Warmers
Every weekend in Winter (Friday to Sunday) try our homemade soup with GK’s, breads, cheeses, salami and olives.
Keep warm in the winery
$15 per person… phone:63441819 for groups or mid week days
Toms Wood Fired Pizza
Sunday July 11 and Sunday August 8th
By Request…..Toms Waterhole’s great wood fired pizzas at lunchtime. Join us for Sunday lunch and enjoy our famous pizzas and salad followed by espresso coffee and cake. $25 per person…..Bookings essential phone 6344 1819
Read More...Winter News and Two new releases
The lizards of Canowindra
There’s a great old Australian saying, “flat out like a lizard drinking,” that doesn’t even begin to describe the last couple of months. We’ve had a Balloon Festival Week, we’ve had a Hundred Mile Dinner, we’ve had lunches with the winemaker, red blending workshops and in between it all we’ve managed to complete this year’s vintage.
Our Norwegian students, Elizabeth and Espen, think we’re mad and there are moments when we agree with them but when you see seventeen balloons in the sky on a clear frosty morning, or feed forty satisfied guests at lunch, or taste the new vintage and know that this year was something special, then that’s almost reward enough.
So we have been busy and that’s one excuse for the newsletter coming out late. The other is that we bottled the first of our 2010 vintage wines and we thought we’d hold back the newsletter until they were in the bottle and available for sale. And they are.
A rose by any other grape
We have always believed that true rose is made best with Grenache grapes and we have written this several times in the past. So what’s a winemaker to do when the only Grenache in the district is completely wiped out by frost? He turns to another variety.
Our first experimental rose made in 2008 was made with Shiraz grapes. We, and you, liked it, but at the time we were convinced that Shiraz was not a “natural.” It was not so much that it couldn’t make great rose but that it was “difficult” and required a degree of chemical intervention that we were uncomfortable with. Many of our winemaking colleagues told us not to worry – chemistry is a part of wine they say – but we prefer to be as natural as possible and Grenache gave us that chance.
But this year, with no Grenache we were forced to look again at Shiraz, but given our preference for a natural approach, we returned to Shiraz with a difference. What we did was, as in the past, stop the fermentation when there was still sugar in the wine but this time to add the “grip”, that lovely citrus acid bite, rather than call for the chemistry book we did something unusual. We happened to have some very dry Chardonnay that we had made as sparkling wine base and we added 5% of that.
The result was remarkable and blessedly free of chemical additions, just wine. So, for description:
2010 Shiraz Rose: A shining pink, perhaps just a fraction darker than 2009 but you’d only notice if you looked at them side by side. The aroma is intense, rose petals and strawberries and the wine starts sweet like 2009 and finishes citrus dry but unlike 2009 with a touch of green apple and, we think a slightly more intense and lingering after-taste.
But we’d still prefer to use Grenache if we could get it. Making it this way is damn hard!
Order this wine at a discounted price on line by logging in at www.tomswaterhole.com.au/shopcustadminlogin.asp
The new “balloon white.”
Most of our visitors don’t ask for our Semillon Chardonnay blend, they ask for the “Balloon white” because of the balloon on the label. For some months we have had to disappoint them, but now, at last we have a new release.
The original idea behind our Semillon Chardonnay blend was that we wanted an aromatic but astringent wine along the lines of the Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blancs and this was our take on the flavour style given that we don’t grow Sauvignon Blanc in the region. Just in passing, some local cellar doors are offering a “local” Sem/Sav but the Sav all comes from either Orange or Young. There are a lot of Semillon Chardonnay blends going around, especially from the irrigation areas.
For us, the blend is something we are aiming for from the moment we receive the grapes in the winery so the parcels of grapes we use often (in fact, nearly always) have a slightly different treatment to the grapes we use for our premium Semillons and Chardonnays. Just how we differentiate them is a bit of a trade secret, sufficient to say that we do. Our blend is not an after-thought.
Waterhole Blend Semillon Chardonnay: This new release is, coincidentally an almost exact blend of 50% Semillon and 50% Chardonnay and this is the highest proportion of Chardonnay that we have ever used. It is a green/gold colour, showing an intense aromatic floral citrus aroma and a mouth filling flavour of peaches, apples and limes. It’s a wonderful alternative to those increasingly boring New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs.
Order this wine at a discounted price on line by logging in at www.tomswaterhole.com.au/shopcustadminlogin.asp
Canowindra terroir
Our reds have now all finished fermenting and have been racked to our selected barrels and tanks. Overall we are absolutely delighted with the results. It’s far too early to rank the vintage for quality but our initial impression is that it is certainly up there with 2002 and 2005. But there’s one interesting thing we thought we’d share with you.
Canowindra sits in a bowl in the hills, a bit like Mudgee. The predominant soil type is sandy loam that varies in colour from red through yellow to light brown depending on the underlying sub-soil that can be limestone, shale or basalt. But at various points the basalt breaks through to the topsoil and there are quite a few vineyards in the region that have small areas of this basalt outcropping that is generally cursed by the vineyard workers because it’s rough on the machinery.
We have noticed over the years that the grapes, especially the Shiraz, that come from this basalt soil seem to be far more intense, deeper in both colour and flavour, but we have never been able to get a large enough parcel to prove our point until this year.
This year a vineyard that was previously contracted to one of the major wine companies was turned loose and we were able to acquire some of their grapes. This vineyard is planted almost entirely on basalt and the resulting wine is nothing short of astonishing. Some of it we have hand plunged, some of it we have pumped over, We are aging part of it in new American oak barrels and the rest we are using French.
This is going to be a grand experiment to prove once and for all the concept of terroir and to establish once and for all the best way of making top quality Shiraz.
There’s just one thing. We have never made a bigger wine. We think it will be five years before it’s ready.
A sad sight and a welcome return
Throughout the Cowra region vineyards are being pulled. Most of Swinging Bridge has been pulled, Cowra Crossing has gone, Mt Lewis is on care and maintenance and others are seriously at risk. Partly it’s a lack of water; partly it’s the poor prices and over supply. Often it’s the raw economics of the fact that an acre of land with vines on it is worth $1,000 and an acre without is $2,000. But whatever the reason there is no more melancholy sight to a winemaker than to see hectares of once lush vines pulled and stacked and waiting for burning.
But then, in the midst of this doom and gloom you get good news and one of the best pieces of news for ages is the return of Jamie and Julia Andrews to Hamilton’s Bluff.
Any of you who have visited us will have driven past the Hamilton’s Bluff vineyard on the way to our winery. The vineyard also has a very classy cellar door facility but several years ago Jamie and Julia decided to move into town and the cellar door was closed. This was a great pity because Hamilton’s Bluff and Toms Waterhole were always able to attract more people together than either of us alone.
And our wines did not compete. Jamie specialises in Sangiovese and a Chardonnay style quite different to our own. Wine tourists bought more from both of us that from either one or the other.
So welcome back Jamie and Julia and if you’re coming to visit us call in on them on the way and taste Jamie’s Sangiovese.
