Winemaking
Wines are made at Star Lane Vineyard by hand with passion and a heart felt love of the job. Liz is the winemaker but as anyone who has a winery knows it takes a team of dedicated people at harvest and throughout the vintage to make a good wine.
The fruit is all hand picked and great care is taken by the group of pickers that come back every year to assist with the vintage to make sure that only the best fruit gets put into the bucket for the production of the wine. The fruit is picked in the cool of the evening and vintage is a fun and social occasion and all our friends and family get the opportunity to participate in some way.
Only the very best fruit has the opportunity of making a great wine you cannot make fantastic wine without wonderful fruit. A lot of time and effort is put into the vineyard to insure this is the case.
Once the fruit has been picked it is processed immediately and then the magic starts to begin. We do not add any yeast to the fruit it is left to start off and go through its fermentation process on its own. The fruit utilises the natural yeast that is present on the skin of the berries. Once it is destemmed and crushed and put into tank the yeast starts its work within a few days.
The wine takes usually a week or more to go through its primary fermentation process and is fermented in open top fermenters. It is left on skins a week or two after primary ferment for cold maceration. The ferments are hand plunged and pumped over every four hours during ferment including at night and the temperature of the ferment is closely monitored. The fruit is then basket pressed to extract the final juice from the berries and skins.
After this the wine is put into tank to settle overnight and then is put into barrel to undergo its secondary fermentation process and is allowed to naturally go through malolactic fermentation. This process is not hurried and is allowed to go through in a long and slow motion through winter, into spring and then is completed in early summer before the heat begins.
The wine is usually only racked once and egg white fining is usually used at the end of the winemaking process to soften tannins and provide a great mouth feel.
The oak barrels used are 100% French with 40% to 50% new oak included in the mix of barrels each year. Sirugue and bossuet are the barrels used and the wine is kept in these barrels for almost 2 years.
The wines are made to be complex with elegance and finesse and true to varietal character. They are distinct but with a reflection of the region to which they are grown.
Once the wine is bottles many, many hours of work and care have been tendered into making the end product. This wine is truly hand crafted and there has been little chemical or additive intervention in making the wine. This process of making the wine allows the fruit to show its true colours and to shine through the true reflection of what Star Lane Wines are about.
