Our Vineyard - An Overview
Brook Eden’s vineyards are sited along a ridge of deep, free-draining, Basalt soils on a small, North and East facing hill in the Pipers Brook region of North East Tasmania.
This is a cool site, within a cool-climate, so represents viticulture "on-the-edge".
In warm, dry years we will shine, producing some truly magnificent wines, such as the 2005 vintage, where our Pinot won Trophy for Best Pinot Noir at the Tasmanian Wine Show and Trophy for Best Red Wine of Show.
In cold, wet years, we’ll struggle. In those years, we’ll put more of our fruit into sparkling wine (because fruit for sparkling wine is picked earlier and less ripe than for table wine) and because this region is acknowledged as producing the best sparkling wine in Australia.
The existing vineyard was planted in the late 1980’s to Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling and Chardonnay. Merlot was added in the mid 1990’s.
We made Cabernet Sauvignon for the last time in 2005, then replaced the vines with Pinot Gris, which is more suited to our climate than Cabernet.
The existing vineyard is all trellised to VSP in a 2m row x 1m vine spacing. All vines are cane-pruned by hand, to bud numbers based on pruning weight ratios and individual vine vigour. Depending on the block, soil, and vine vigour, we lay down between 90-180,000 buds/Ha, or 18-36 buds per vine.
The aim is to produce vines with an optimum balance of fruit to leaf area and to enable all leaves to have good sunlight exposure with minimal shading within the canopy, as excessive shading can result in underperforming leaves, "green" flavours in the wine, higher fungal disease pressure and poor bud initiation in the following year.
Shading in a cool climate means lose 200 points, go direct to jail.
During the growing season, we undertake extensive, hand, canopy management of: shoot positioning; shoot thinning; leaf removal; and fruit thinning to maintain that all important balance of fruit-to-leaf ratio and eliminate dense, shaded areas of the canopy.
We would prefer to adopt a divided canopy trellis system, thus achieving a greater exposed leaf area per vine, (and we are trialing a modified Scott Henry trellis in a few Pinot rows) but on the blocks with 2m East-West row spacing, raising the trellis height to achieve the desired vertical canopy division risks shading of the lower portion of the canopy by the adjacent row.
But we’re trialing it anyhow.
In the mean time, we achieve individual vine-balance and control vigour by laying down a sacrificial cane, where necessary, which is removed in summer as vine-growth stops.
Our other problem in raising trellis heights on the existing blocks (even the optimum North/South oriented block) is Wind. We’re on a site which can be quite breezy. No, make that occasionally bloody windy. It can blow dogs off chains here in Spring, so another of our priorities is to ginger up the wind-break-planting program. That should produce significant improvements in vine performance.
The new vineyard, to be planted further up the ridge, will be set up with optimal north-south row orientation, higher trellising, slightly wider row spacing (2.2m) and extensive windbreaks. This will give us optimal control of vigour, sun-exposure and vine balance. Marvelous what you can do with hindsight.
Own Your Own Rows
To satisfy the increasing demand for Brook Eden wine, we’ve decided to expand the vineyard by a further 3 Hectares, onto what we believe will be the best viticulture land on Brook Eden.
In line with our philosophy of giving something back to our supporters, we’ve decided to offer everyone the opportunity of owning their own “row” of vines.
© Brook Eden Vineyard 2007 | Lebrina, Tasmania, Australia | +61 (0) 3 6395 6244
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