The Wines

Champsaur has on offer, or if presently unavailable, in the process of maturation, three varietal wines.

They are:

Champsaur Homedale Shiraz

Champsaur Homedale Shiraz Rose

Champsaur Homedale Cabernet

The progressive ripening of Champsaur grapes is monitored closely from January onwards and in February of each year fruit that will not ripen at the optimum time is pruned off the vines.

Baume, the measure of grape sugar levels, titrateable acid levels and ph are tested weekly and only when these are within the optimum range for maximum fruit maturity and flavour are the grapes harvested.

Harvest

At Harvest picking teams are organised so that the whole of any one block Is picked on one day. Picking days are long with the pickers congregating at the Homedale homestead at 6.00am and working through until a block is harvested.

Full Bryce buckets are loaded onto a trailer moving up and down the rows of vines and are then emptied into half tonne bins for transport just down the valley to the winery, where the bins lie in the cool of the cask hall until the block is picked and all the harvested grapes have been delivered for crushing.

Winemaking Today

With the day’s picking over the Winegrower and the Vineyard Overseer go to the winery and with the Winemaker, observe the day’s crop moving down through the modern steel crusher de-stemmer and off through a portable stainless steel must pump into stainless steel or wax lined, temperature controlled fermenters.

After completion of the primary ferment the must is pumped to the press, not the basket press of 1886 but a high tech rotary air bag press, which achieves a firm, even pressing of all grapes without liberating any unwanted organic chemicals.

From the press the wine goes to mature in 300 litre French and American oak barrels, which are taken out of service after a few years when the oak is no longer able to impart its subtle flavours into the wine. Only once fully matured in oak, which can take a year or more, is the wine drawn off and bottled, and cellared again in a controlled temperature cellar to complete its bottle maturation.

All Champsaur wines are bottled under Stelvin Closures. This is the trade name for a type of screw cap wine bottle closure. Ever since cork began to be used to close wine bottles, it has been found that even though it does the job admirably, it has deficiencies. Apart from cork shrinkage leading to oxidation and wine loss, about one in twelve cork closed bottles suffers from a bacterial infection, known as ‘cork taint’, which goes into the wine and giving rise to the saying that a wine ‘is corked’. The use of Stelvin Closures avoids this problem entirely and ensures that the wine matures slowly and properly, free from the risk of oxidation.

THE RESULT

Whilst only time will tell just how successful our decision to have a low yield, low irrigation, hand pruned, hand picked vineyard may be the early results are promising with the first Champsaur Shiraz vintage made from Homedale grapes, the 2005 Homedale Shiraz, being awarded a gold medal at the 2006 Clear Image Mudgee Wine Show against a strong field of entrants.