New Winemaker, Who Dis?

Hey, Dwayne!

Sports teams have finals.  Students have exams.  For winemakers, the big moment of truth, the event the whole year’s efforts have led up to is… harvest. 

And 2021’s harvest is looking good!

New Head Winemaker, Dwayne Cunningham has confirmed that early indications are that the wines made from our 2021 vintage are looking incredible! So mark your calendars friends, you’re going to want to get your hands on this year’s batch of 6Ft6 wines before they inevitably sell out. Yes, our sell-out 6Ft6 Rosé will be back!

What to Expect?

Growing conditions throughout the 2020/21 season were solid, with some good rainfall to start off the winter and no crazy hot days to contend with. This kept our grapes in tip top condition, with beautiful, intense, well-developed flavours and aromas.

This year, harvest kicked off in late February. After some chopping and changing of dates, given we are forever at the whims of Mother Nature in the vineyard, we began picking chardonnay and continued through to around the 20^th of March when we finished with the beast that is pinot noir.

In a vineyard the size of ours, most of the grapes are machine harvested.  We do this in the cool of the night to help concentrate the aromas and flavours.  Cool fruit means better control over the fermentation process, this is especially important for our white wines and rosé.

Our whites are now all through the fermentation process (which means they are now no longer just grape juice and are technically wine!), and are sitting in barrels or stainless-steel tanks.  The next step is to start blending parcels of fruit (grapes from different areas of the vineyard) for our 6Ft6 range and preparing them for bottling.

Our 6Ft6 pinot noir is sitting pretty in its French oak barrels as it goes through a naturally occurring second fermentation (called Malolactic Fermentation, which is responsible for that smooth silkiness 6Ft6 pinot is famous for).  Once it finishes fermenting, it will be tasted and tweaked before bottling to ensure we are nailing the flavours that our customers know and love.

We can’t wait to share 2021’s range of 6Ft6 wines with you all! For a more in-depth post on our vintage at Austin’s, check out the blog post here and to learn about our vineyard click here.