TRIALS AND NEWS AT TEMPLE BRUER
STAKVATS
All winemakers are familiar with barrels and most with their cleaning and maintenance and much has been written on this. A relatively new product called a Stakvat is a hybrid stainless steel and oak vessel with four sides stainless steel and two new oak sides, accommodating approximately 30 toasted staves. More than one internal rack may b fitted. With 30 internal staves and new oak sides, the surface area to volume ratio equals that of four barriques (approx. 225L). They hold 900L and cost about the same as four barriques. Replacement sides and internal staves cost about a quarter of the cost for four new barriques, so that second and subsequent years we have effectively new oak storage for approximately a quarter of the cost of new oak storage. Other economies are possible, e.g., shaving sides and converting them to internal staves. Also, used staves may be converted to shavings for composting.
Some analysis of wines at
the Australian Wine Research Institute for oak volatiles is shown in Table 3.
NB1, NB2, SV4, SV5 and OB2 were a 1999 Merlot from Temple Bruer. SV6 was a 1999
Merlot from another winery.
Some sensory analysis of the five Temple Bruer wines showed that NB1, NB2, SV4 and SV5 were all showing more new oak character than OB2, and were preferred to OB2. Differences between new barriques and new Stakvats were inconclusive, with some preference for new barriques and some for new Stakvats.
One highly significant difference between Stakvats and barriques is in their ease of cleaning. Most wineries attempt to clean barrels by placing them upside down on a sprinkler of some type and hoping that the action of the water, with or without the addition of chemicals, will remove everything they want to remove. It is hard to check barrels for cleanliness without disassembly – that bit is easy, but you need a cooper to rebuild the barrel. Stackvats have a swing door so that an operator can reach every part of the vessel with a standard high-pressure water cleaner – no chemicals are required, and you can see easily every surface. The amount of water required to completely clean a Stackvat is so little that we use rainwater in order to save a rinsing step.
TABLE 3
|
Samples | |||||||
|
Compound |
NB1 |
NB2 |
SV4 |
SV5 |
SV6 |
OB2 | |
|
Cis-Oak Lactone |
m g/L |
115 |
131 |
46 |
63 |
251 |
178 |
|
Trans-Oak Lactone |
m g/L |
146 |
132 |
30 |
31 |
26 |
15 |
|
Guaiacol |
m g/L |
19 |
11 |
8 |
8 |
23 |
4 |
|
4-Methylguaiacol |
m g/L |
14 |
10 |
6 |
6 |
7 |
1 |
|
Vanillin |
m g/L |
150 |
186 |
104 |
107 |
167 |
59 |
|
4-Ethyphenol |
m g/L |
1250 |
1300 |
1160 |
1140 |
69 |
1180 |
|
4-Ethyguaiacol |
m g/L |
408 |
448 |
428 |
427 |
21 |
389 |
Key
NB1, NB2: New barrique 1 and 2
SV4, SV5: New Stakvat 4 and 5
SV6: New Stakvat not water conditioned
OB2: Old barrique (third use)
GREENHOUSE
CHALLENGE
In September 2000 Temple Bruer Wines was nominated and accepted nomination as a Greenhouse Challenge member. What this means is that we will audit all of our activities, i.e. grape growing, growing (nursery) grapevines for sale, and wine making for their Greenhouse Gas production. This is a major undertaking. Once the audits are completed, we are to workout reduction strategies wherever possible with some Federal Government assistance, and implement these reduction strategies with further monitoring. Once our audits are complete we are to publish them and our reduction strategies (format yet to be determined).
Preliminary overall audits of Temple Bruer Wines greenhouse gas production was 164 tonnes of CO2 and we have set in progress mechanisms for dividing this up to determine all contributing sources. Accurate mapping of Temple Bruer’s native vegetation is also not yet complete, however it does include approximately four hectares of deep-rooted natives, greater than five year old and two hectares of deep-rooted natives less than five years old.
Current estimates for moderate to low CO2 sequestration rates are approximately thirty tonnes per hectare per year for the deep-rooted natives above the age of five. Therefore we are probably not far off balanced at present. These calculations ignore the sequestration of CO2 by the mature vineyard (approximately twenty-four hectares above the age of five and three below). CO2 sequestration by mature horticultural crops is probably much less than that of mature deep-rooted natives but even if we assume twenty tonnes, this still gives us another approximately five hectares equivalent.
Our emphasis is not on just building up CO2 sinks, but more
importantly on reducing the amount of CO2 produced in the first place. This
means reducing our overall energy usage and thinking more thoroughly about how
we can make the processes we use more environmentally friendly. There are many
different ways of achieving this e.g. if we dramatically improve water quality,
we could then reduce the amount of water applied therefore much reducing the
pumping, and particularly energy usage.
ORGANIC CONTROL OF POWDERY MILDEW WITHOUT SULPHUR
By David Bruer and Peter Crisp respectively
CEO Temple Bruer Wines and
PhD student Waite Campus, University of Adelaide.
Temple Bruer Wines is for the 2001 / 2002 growing season, planning to remove sulphur from its Powdery Mildew control program. We believe control is achievable following promising results with milk / whey, vegetable oils, and bicarbonates. The reasons for wanting to achieve removal of sulphur are as follows;
Our planned spray program is set out below actual spray concentrations, rates per LA and dates are to be included in the fortnightly reports or more frequently if required by seasonal conditions.
Planned spray program for 24 Ha A grade certified vineyard, Temple Bruer Vineyard Langhorne Creek S.A.
|
Spray Event |
Agent Used |
Concentration |
Rate / HA |
Date |
|
1 |
Synertrol Horti-oil Ecocarb |
2mL/L 3g/L |
300L |
Early October |
|
2 |
Whey |
15g/L |
400L |
Late October |
|
3 |
Whey |
15g/L |
500L |
Early November |
|
4 |
Synertrol Horti-Oil Ecocarb |
2mL/L 3g/L |
600L |
Early November |
|
5 |
Whey |
15g/L |
600L |
Late November |
|
6 |
Whey |
15g/L |
600L |
Mid December |
Disease levels will be monitored on an ongoing basis with disease levels scored prior to each treatment. Both leaves and bunches will be score on a 0 -10 scale, with 0 being no visible disease and 10 relating to greater than 90% of a leaf or bunch affected by grapevine powdery mildew. Assessments will be made on all varieties within the vineyard.
Subsequent sprays will depend on disease pressure, and this program may be modified depending on seasonal conditions.
In addition to our A grade vineyard, Temple Bruer has 2.3 Ha of pre-conversion vineyard, cv shiraz, in which a series of replicated small block trials are planned. These include the above programme applications of Synertrol Horti-Oil (Organic Crop Protectants Pty Ltd), Ecocarb (Organic Crop Protectants Pty Ltd), milk, whey, whey protein and a bacterium (Bacillus subtilis). These treatments will be evaluated for their efficacy using in comparison with three controls; untreated vines, fortnightly applications of sulphur and possibly a synthetic fungicide. Treatments will be applied at times and volumes similar to those being used in the large scale trial.
Further small block trials will be conducted at Warriparinga in the southern suburbs of Adelaide and at Glenara Wines in the Adelaide Hills. These trials will include the treatments listed above and Biotrol (Gulff Ag Pty Ltd), seaweed extract and a formulation based on methionine and riboflavin. Assessment methods being used for the small block trials will be the same as for the main vineyard. The impact of the various treatments on insect and mite populations with the vine canopies will be monitored in the small block trials by Robert Marlow, an honours student at the University of Adelaide.
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