News from the most Velvet of Ears

Hi All

It’s been a long time between updates and for some of you, well you’ve never had one. We won’t make excuses or try to tell you how busy we’ve been, we’re all like that now it seems.

A lot has happened over the past 12 months and here’s a bit of a summary. As always if you’d like more details or to taste some wine you’re more than welcome to drop by, just let us know before you roll up, so we can put our fancy work boots on.

A long, wet winter has seen us faced with some serious drainage challenges around our property. We’re trying to dry out and in our second year here, we’re still learning more and more every day. Things like sun placement through the seasons, weed control and exactly where the tractor gets bogged.

We still plan to plant Gamay and we encourage you all to try and grab a bottle the next time you’re shopping for some wine. You’ll find it similar to a Pinot, light in style but with enough body and smell to keep you interested.

Whilst we’re only a small farm we’re trying to practice some big ideas, we’ll never be 100% organic but in everything we do, we have the environment and our surroundings at front of mind. Our composting is providing great results and our new veggie patches should be built and producing in the early Autumn, as long as we can find a few extra hours in the day.

Our 2019 vintage was always going to be a fun one, with Duncan another winemaker moving in, and winery tetris becoming our favourite game.

The wine has had a great rest this winter and probably easiest to talk about them individually:

• The 2018 Heathcote Shiraz will be bottled later this year and we’re excited at the prospect of our first full bodied red finally coming to life.

• The 2019 Shiraz this year, with grapes from our friends at Shiraz Republic in Heathcote is looking great and will continue to sit in barrel until next year.

• The 2019 Pinot Noir, from our now regular vineyard in Balnarring, looks fantastic and we’ve been very pleasantly surprised.

• The 2019 Shiraz Rose or Rose B as we are calling it, has been the stand out for this year. What started out as a brave experiment has resulted in a wine that apparently can’t be bottled because the team will just drink it all straight from the barrel.

• We’ve left the 2018 Mornington Pinot Noir until last as we bottled it earlier this year with some help from our generous and always fun cellar crew. We’ve found that bottle age is helping this wine develop and hence why we haven’t fully released it, until now. We decanted it and let it breath the other night, and what resulted truly blew us away. So, feel free to order away, this wine will reward with cellaring for 2-5 years or drink it now. With some patience, air and decanting it will surprise you with its smooth velvet (of course) flavours.

We still have a very small amount of some aged stock from our limited time in the Yarra Valley, many of you would’ve tried some of these wines. In order to make room for everything Vintage 2020, we’re offering some specials to free up some space.

• The 2015 EX (stood for experimental) Chardonnay from the Yarra Valley has aged really well in the bottle and is $28 a bottle.

• The 2016 Pinot Noir is also rewarding with some air and we’ve matched it with everything from Salmon to Lamb, jump in at $29 a bottle.

• The 2017 Pinot Noir with its stand out Steampunk skull label has been a Saturday night cellar crew favourite for a long time, and as such we only have a few bottles left, so at $29 we don’t expect it to last long.

If you order 12 bottles or more we’ll throw in free shipping, if online ordering is easiest go for it at www.mrvelvetears.com.au/shop. Otherwise shoot us an email at ashley@mrvelvetears.com.au and we don’t have to pay our processing company a commission!

Like us on the Facebook, we really need to build that one up, and feel free to post a pic when enjoying our stuff.

Our “cellar door” is the winery and we’d love to welcome you. Just give us a call to organise a time, as we’ll need put on our fancy work boots.

Until next time, stay safe and look after each other.

Ashley and Andrea