I just thought you might like to start planning your leave arrangements and come along to the next Australian Hot Air Balloon Championships in 2011.
They are being held in Canowindra in NSW and will run from the 11th to the 20th April 2011

More details will be sent as they come to hand but in the meantime if you would like further information or to pre-register contact Graham and Jan Kerr <balloonjan@bigpond.com>

Cheers.

Dale Allen
National Administrator
Australian Ballooning Federation Inc
P.O. Box 402
Emerald Vic 3782
Tel (03) 5968 6533
Fax (03) 5968 6599
<www.abf.net.au>

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

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.

Join our winemaker for a long, lazy ploughmans lunch of our homemade cheeses, smoked meats, pate, pickles, chutneys and breads.and a glass of wine, whilst he entertains you with anecdotal wine stories from around the world.

Where: Toms Waterhole Wines
Longs Corner Rd., Canowindra
NSW Australia

Time: 12 mid-day

Bookings: Essential - Phone Jan on (02) 6344 1819

Dates: Sundays 19 September, 17 October, 21 November

Also: Montgolfier Balloon weekend 20/21 November 2010

[ photo : geofflubich ]

Well, Canowindra Challenge has come and gone with a week filled with excitement and community involvement. As stated at the awards ceremony tonight in Memorial Park, Canowindra there is plenty to look forward to with talk already of running the event next year.

Many thanks to all of our wonderful sponsors and a huge thankyou to our volunteers who have made this event possible. A special mention also to all of you who traveled long distances to be part of the Canowindra Challenge 2010 event.

See more images from this event here

To access the Canowindra Challenge 2010 Programme please click on the image below.

You can also read more about the setup for the Canowindra Challenge 2010 by visiting the main Canowindra Challenge page.

All pilots wishing to attend are reminded that your registration forms are due in now.

Please note a change for the master briefing to 3.00pm Monday 5th April not Sunday as previously circulated.

Another change is that students with instructors and low hour pilots may attend as non-competing “Fiesta” attendees with free registration.