Our vineyard
The vineyard lies 80 metres above sea level on a frost free site, 5km inland from Bass Strait. With a strong maritime influence, our grapes enjoy the long warm days and cool nights, moderated by the prevailing north-westerly sea breezes. The vineyard grows in deep ferrousol soils which provide excellent water drainage and root penetration, allowing us to dry-grow our vines. The vineyard blocks face North-East which gives the vineyard full sun exposure to ensure optimal ripeness and colour in our grapes. Our pinot noir and chardonnay was planted in 1994. Current planting densities for these blocks are 2.75m x 1m (3636 vines/ha).Every task carried out in our vineyard is performed by hand, from pruning in winter through to leaf plucking and fruit thinning at bunch closure. This allows us to give every bunch of grapes all the care and attention it needs to ripen perfectly and with balanced acid. A small (94cm wide) light weight, low hp tractor is used for spraying and slashing, to ensure minimal compaction of our soils. At harvest time all our grapes are handpicked by our families and friends in the cool autumn mornings, and then transported to the winery for processing, a maximum 150m from the vineyard.
In 2006 we undertook the task of removing 0.8ha of under-performing chardonnay and pinot noir and began replanting new clones of these two varieties. This block is planted at a high density of 1.3m x 1m (7700 vines/ha) with some rows planted at 1.3m x 0.75m (10250 vines/ha). We are aiming for increased fruit intensity within these blocks as our yields per vine will be kept considerably low (less than 0.7kg per vine). This block will be ready to start producing fruit from 2011-2012 as the vines mature.
Our future expansions on the property will be another hectare of close-planted vineyard on a patch of land we have cleared of a tree plantation this year, and will rehabilitate the soils for a couple of seasons before planting. This block features more gravelly loams, with large amounts of quartz, over a sandstone base, which should yield grapes of a different flavour profile from our existing blocks.
Vintage usually occurs between mid March and late April depending on the season.
Bellingham Vineyard
Currently we lease Bellingham Estate Vineyard, located 1.5km along from Sinapius Vineyard on the Bridport Highway. We source Riesling from this vineyard which was planted in 1981. The vineyard which faces North West, is dry grown and the old vines grow in very poor gravel/clay soils. The vines are naturally low yielding, thanks to the prevailing north-westerly winds which come in every afternoon, keeping the vigour and bunch weights way down!!
