An Ideal Vintage

Margaret River Region is internationally renowned for its wine, particularly Chardonnay & Cabernet Sauvignon.

From late January to early May, depending on the season, the harvest takes place - international workers arrive, all-night operations begin in the vineyards and crates of grapes are brought into the many wineries across the region. 

Viticulturalist, Tim Quinlan and winemaker, Ely Jarvis speak to host, Kellie Tannock to learn what really happens during the harvest.

For further listening, the four-part Wine Unearthed podcast series is available on margaretriver.com. This series takes a deeper dive into Margaret River's wine scene and some of the stories behind the labels.

Thanks for listening and if you've enjoyed this podcast, please share with your family and friends.

For more inspiration on visiting the Margaret River Region follow @margaretriver on Instagram or explore www.margaretriver.com.

This show was recorded at RMR 101.9FM, Margaret River Region.

Transcript

Kellie Tannock 0:01

Welcome to Cape's Conversations, sharing the stories that make the Margaret River region a truly special place to live and visit. Hello, I'm Kellie Tannock, and this week we're going behind the scenes of the Margaret River wine industry's most important event, the harvest. Each year, from late January to early May, depending on the season, international workers move in, vineyards start all-night operations, and we see crates of grapes being hauled across the region to the many wineries. To explain what happens in all this frenzied busyness, I'm joined by viticulturalist Tim Quinlan and winemaker Eloise Jarvis, who also wears a sustainable wine hat. Welcome to you both.

Tim Quinlan 0:39

Thank you.

Kellie Tannock 0:39

Thank you. Tim, let's start with you because your work is crucial to the start of the harvest. Can you explain what you do?

Tim Quinlan 0:45

I tend the vines from when they're dormant through to when they're picked. So I'm involved in uh uh monitoring the vines for plant pest diseases, nutrient disorders, uh environmental stresses, I guess. Then uh timing of pruning, canopy management, harvest logistics and planning uh when to pick with the winemaker. So it's a spectrum from when they're dormant through to when they're ready to rock.

Kellie Tannock 1:19

Can you tell me what what you mean by dormant?

Tim Quinlan 1:21

So they look dead uh in June, July, so fully asleep, hopefully, except for sometimes Chardonnay, which needs a bit more chill uh but still behaves and produces fantastic Margaret River wines. But I work with fantastic people who are versed in looking at a vine and leaving the appropriate number of buds so that the vine wakes up balanced. And that's a real skill.

Kellie Tannock 1:49

That's taking it back a little bit. I'm sure most people understand that the grape harvest is when the grapes are picked. But the setup actually starts in spring, is that right?

Tim Quinlan 1:57

Yeah, so pruning goes uh from roughly June through to the end of August. By about September, little woolly buds form and they burst into the first little green leaf. So that's an exciting time. Then September you uh it'll move towards flowering. And then October, November you've got rapid shoot growth, the little inflorescences that will become the bunches appear. And uh and then they'll flower beautiful little white stamens, they have a lemony uh vanilla aroma, and uh they uh self-fertilize and get ready for the next stage in um November, December, uh where we have fruit set.

Kellie Tannock 2:50

Okay, and once that fruit's set and it sits there for a while, how do you know when it's ready to pick?

Tim Quinlan 2:56

In January, February you go through the veraison when the red grapes turn colour, and the white grapes are go from like an opaque to almost a translucent colour. At that stage they're beginning to soften and start the ripening process, and that is when they're far enough through, we'll start testing samples of the bunches in the lab. That's when the experts come into play.

Kellie Tannock 3:25

And what sort of things are you looking for? What is the lab looking for? How do we know that it's ready?

Tim Quinlan 3:31

You have baume, a measure of the sugar level, which gets you the final alcohol. And then the acidity and pH, they'll drive the line of the wines and give you the palate weight or the softness of it. Very crucial to get those three in balance so you're driving for these fantastic wines.

Kellie Tannock 3:53

And Ely, you're relying on viticulturists like Tim to bring you the best grapes possible. How much influence do winemakers have in the vineyard? And again, what are you looking for at that picking time?

Ely Jarvis 4:04

Look, winemakers can have as much influence as they choose to have. And I think the best winemakers that we have in our industry are those who value their viticulturalists and really work on that relationship and have a deep relationship with their viticultural team. Because I mean, at the end of the day, you can only make wine with what's grown, and if that's not grown to its absolute optimum, then you're always going to be making up for what you could have had. But I make a point of developing and hopefully having really good relationships with the viticulturalists and the growers that I work with, and making it really clear that you know what they're doing is super important to me and to what we want at the end of the day. And so, you know, we start Tim and I we started walking rows together when the vines were dormant. Like we went and had chats about how they looked going into dormancy to just come in at the end of the show, and the show being how the grapes have been grown, you've kind of missed a huge opportunity and space.

Kellie Tannock 5:08

And so, as we're coming to into harvest, what are you as a winemaker looking for in the grape? To to know whether it's time to pick. Yeah.

Ely Jarvis 5:15

Yeah, so you're looking at that evenness of how it's developing, um, you're looking at the evolution of the flavours. So, say, like the white grapes, you know, they'll go from being quite tart and acidic to then starting to present some really lovely aromatics, and you'll start to see those aromatics sort of unfold and build in concentration, but it's again comes back to that balance of acidity and and retaining the freshness and the vibrancy of them. So it's this critical point of walking a lot of rows and tasting a lot of berries and getting a few belly aches and kind of, you know, you know, just kind of being in amongst it enough so that you have a finger on the pulse. And and whilst the numbers that Tim referred to with the berry samplings are really important to guide us, they're not the final decision. They just to give us an idea of how the vines are travelling with balance, like in a beautiful year like we've had this year. Like, honestly, 2026 is just a stunning vintage so far. Um, it's been a really moderate, even maturation for across the whites, and we've retained beautiful natural acidity. So, and we've not had the pressure of weather at this point, to touch wood. Um and so we we've had the luxury of being able to make decisions when we want to. Um, we also haven't had bird pressure, so we haven't had to manage that either, and that's a really important thing here in Margaret River. And then with the reds, it's actually about the physiological ripeness of the colour, you know, getting a richness of that colour, the tannin ripeness in the skins, and these both occur in the skins, the skin, the um the colour and the tannins, and then getting the flavour profile that you want, and again, that's sort of leaning into a riper flavour profile. So, again, it's walking a lot of rows and eating a lot of berries and having some good chats.

Kellie Tannock 7:07

Sounds great. You both are pretty tired, I have to say. So there's a lot going on here. I have to ask you, I mean, so you're saying not a lot of bird pressure, we've seen a lot of merry blossom. Is that what what you're referring to?

Tim Quinlan 7:17

Oh, it's an extraordinary year for lack of bird pressure to be able to harvest blocks without wading through, seeing if something's damaged and could taint the wine is an absolute treat.

Ely Jarvis 7:30

And the Marri blossom, I mean, they're so important to what we do, and that and you know, the way that they are the natural food source for all of those birds that when it's not here, it's just really intense, kind of the focus that they will have on the vineyard. Whereas in a year like this, you know, we might have nets out. More often than not, it's to keep kangaroos out because the birds just they're busy eating what they love eating, which is the Marri blossom.

Kellie Tannock 7:57

So when you've made that call right, needs to come off. How much of a window do you have to get it off?

Tim Quinlan 8:02

With white wine grapes, you want as narrow a window as possible to retain the natural acidity. The red grapes are a little more forgiving. I guess Chardonnay is the hardest for me, given that is highly sensitive to being overripe. So planning picking teams in advance, often a week ahead and locking them in so you're not left in the heat with um the grapes getting overly ripe. Sounds incredibly stressful. It can be, yeah.

Kellie Tannock 8:35

I'm Kelly Tannock and I'm chatting with Tim Quinlan and Ely Jarvis. They're two key local faces in wine production and we're chatting about the grape harvest. I'm going to pick up with Ely on the winemaking process after a song break. Tim, you've picked the music for today's show. Would you like to introduce our first song Over And Over?

Tim Quinlan 8:53

The first song was written by my son for his band, Sky Cave, and it is uh a band of his closest mates, uh Sasha, the drummer and Danny , the bassist.

Kellie Tannock 9:06

And of course your son being Oliver Quinlan.

Tim Quinlan 9:09

And he sings really well, but he doesn't farm grapes like I do, so there's a bit of uh variation in the family.

Kellie Tannock 12:36

That was Over and Over by Sky Cave. This is Cape's Conversations, a half hour spotlight on this wonderful region, proudly sponsored by the Margaret River Busselton Tourism Association. And this week we're focused on the wine industry, particularly the harvest, which happens late summer and into autumn every year. Ely Jarvis, you're a winemaker and you now have the perfect grapes delivered to you. What's your part in the vintage from this point?

Ely Jarvis 12:57

So it doesn't actually just start from that point on. You actually start thinking about the vintage back in the previous cycle. So you're looking at kind of things that you might have done in the past and how you might want to improve them. And one of those really important things, if I kind of pick Chardonnay, because that's one of our iconic varieties, is you know, what is the what is the vineyard presented before and where do you want it to go? And then how are you going to make it? So in Margaret River, we predominantly handpick our Chardonnay and then we take it into the winery and we do what's called whole bunch pressing to it, which is where you put those whole bunches into a press and squeeze them gently and get this beautiful juice off it. And how you ferment that juice is actually going to be critical to the expression of it. And in in Margaret River, again, we predominantly ferment our Chardonnay juices in barrels, and the barrels come from France and are generally French oak, and the makeup of those barrels helps to also accentuate, you know, different profiles out of the vineyards. But at the core essence of what I'm making and what my approach is is that the fruit always has to be, and the expression of that vineyard always has to be the hero in that wine, and so it has to have the loudest voice. And what always in mind I have is the end result. Like what is this going to, and where is it going to end up? So if it's going into one of our iconic wines, it's about what does that wine look like and how does this contribute to it, and how do I make it shine best, but be one of the components of. And so that's having that long vision is just as important as having the focus of the here and the now. That all makes sense, but it still sounds incredibly mysterious.

Kellie Tannock 14:46

So I uh which I love because I think that's a lovely part of the of enjoying the wine, is that it retains that mystery and your expertise and your nuance that you bring. So that's that's really lovely. We um obviously we celebrate Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay in the Margaret River region as being our sort of flagship wines. Why do we make those our our most popular wines?

Ely Jarvis 15:06

I think here, and Tim will be able to talk about this as well, um, you know, we're really blessed with an amazing climate in the Margaret River region where we're surrounded by ocean as the capes jut out into it, and that gives us a really moderate temperature. We have a winter rainfall as well, which means that the growing season that that our grapes grow in is is, I guess, not as affected by rainfall during the riper part. And because of that, we have Chardonnay and we have Cabernet that were original clones and varieties brought into Western Australia back in the 50s or even earlier, and they were the ones that were identified as growing really well in this region, and so I guess were established first. And one of the reasons that we also celebrate Chardonnay in particular in this region is we have a clone called Gin Gin, and that clone is a really unique clone to Western Australia, and also it has a real signature personality in Margaret River. So I would say that that's part of why Chardonnay is one of our iconic wines, and then Cabernet, certainly because it was one of the earliest established in the region, and again we have the Horton Mazel selection, which is a selection that is unique to Western Australia and has a particular personality, but at the end of the day, these two varieties grow exceptionally well in the Margaret River region and express themselves very uniquely, and and we've come to learn how to make them the way that that that shines here in Margaret River. So I'd say that's why, you know, and and on a world stage, we dominate actually. Yeah.

Kellie Tannock 16:44

Tim Quinlan, you're from a viticulturalist point of view, do you agree with what Ellie's saying about why we're so Chardonnay Cabernet-centric?

Tim Quinlan 16:52

Absolutely. I think the moderating influence of the ocean cools the vines down after they've been ripening all day and preserves the flavour, the acidity uh that you want for that balanced wine. And with Cabernet, it's so important to bring out the black currant uh ripe berry characters to get the best expression of that variety. So to be able to ripen it slowly in warm, dry conditions so that it goes right through to the tannin ripeness is just a fantastic attribute of the region.

Kellie Tannock 17:32

So the Margaret River Wine Unearthed Podcast, which is a great listen if you want to learn more about the region and its key wines and more, that's actually available on margaretriver.com. We'll put the link for that fork podcast series into the show notes. It's a few years old, but it's still quite relevant. Uh, while I have you both as wine experts, perhaps you can give people some tips on how to taste wine. It can be very daunting, can't it, for um for some of us? Taste it with friends.

Ely Jarvis 17:57

I think I think it's always better when you're with company. And I think some of the most memorable wines that I've ever had are because of the people who I shared them with and and enjoyed them with. But you know what? I think taste it however you would like. Like if you like to smell your wine, you know, swirl it, put your nose in it. If you can't think of the words that will help you describe it, that doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I think what's important is would you go back for another glass of it? And if you would, then it's obviously a wine that you like and you like drinking.

Kellie Tannock 18:28

Why do cellar doors offer tastings and opportunities to learn different wines and showcase some of the range of varietals in the region? Why do they do that?

Tim Quinlan 18:37

It's important for people to get a cross-section of uh all the different wines that people make and and to be able to build their wine knowledge and their appreciation.

Kellie Tannock 18:48

Yeah, a confidence-building thing, do you think, Ely?

Ely Jarvis 18:51

Yeah, I do. And I also think that as a winery and and as a wine producer, we've invested in this product and we've made these wines, but they're also an investment for the consumer because they cost, you know, they're a reasonable amount of money. So to be able to go into a cellar door and sample, you know, wines that you think you would like, or be introduced to even something new that you're not you're you don't know about, but you get a chance to have a taste of, it just broadens your knowledge and then your experience and hopefully what you might buy. And so I think it it is important to be able to taste the wines, but I think it's also important to understand that a lot of effort has gone into the production of these wines, and so it's about um being curious and open to that and and knowing that there's some there's some really you know there's some people who sit behind that wine and that they really care about what's in it, and so yeah, it's a it's a sharing uh process, I think.

Kellie Tannock 19:45

Sure, and um while we want people to go in and enjoy these wines and the experience, there is a little bit of etiquette, isn't there, to remember that you are in someone's cellar door. Can you sort of talk us through that?

Ely Jarvis 19:55

Absolutely, there's a responsible service of alcohol that we have to abide by in our cellar doors, and so when you come in to taste wines with us, it's about I guess understanding that you're there just to simply taste it, not to get a free drink across the board. It's it's about being a bit focused about what it is that you're wanting to look at. And then, you know, if cellar doors do charge for tasting, then that's quite appropriate because each bottle of wine costs us a certain amount to make. But um, I also think it's an opportunity to have a chat, you know, and to get to know more and to uh and to just remain curious. What about you, Tim?

Kellie Tannock 20:32

What are your uh tips for going to the cellar door?

Tim Quinlan 20:34

Ask the person serving you about the wines if you're not sure. And um just enjoy the experience. I think although a lot of technical knowledge goes behind making them, the main thing is to enjoy them.

Ely Jarvis 20:51

The only other thing is if you've got a long day of tasting at cellar doors ahead of you, it's okay to spit.

Tim Quinlan 20:57

I forgot about that one.

Kellie Tannock 21:00

Great tip, great tip. Who wants to do that? But yes, very, very good and responsible advice, thank you, Ellie. I think a lot of people who perhaps don't have a lot of exposure to wine and to cellar doors, do you think a lot of people feel a bit intimidated?

Ely Jarvis 21:14

Go in and just have a go. I you know, they're not intimidating places where we welcome everyone. And if you just come in sort of as a curious person, then I think that's you know the best place to start. So um yeah, wine is for everyone.

Kellie Tannock 21:29

Excellent, great advice. This Capes Conversations. I'm Kellie Tannock, and I'm chatting with Tim Quinlan and Eloise Jarvis, two wine experts with decades of making wine between them. Tim's also showcasing his love of local music. Staying with your selection, Tim. I believe you now have a solo choice from one of the Sky Cave members.

Tim Quinlan 21:47

The next song is by Sash Seaborn with beautiful backup vocals from Beck Voice. And the song is called Next to Me. I hope you enjoy it.

Kellie Tannock 25:23

That was Sash Seaborn with Next to Me. I'm Kellie Tannock. This is Cape's Conversations, and I have viticulturalist Tim Quinlan and winemaker Eloise Jarvis with me in the studio. Ely, do you um also work for wines at the WA as a sustainability and industry development program manager? That's another what does sustainability mean for the wine industry?

Ely Jarvis 25:46

I do, and it means a whole range of things, I think. When we when we think of sustainability, we immediately go to the environment. But it's actually also about business sustainability, about resilience in our industry, and you know, good governance and also the social license that we have to be able to do the things that we do. So it covers a whole range of things, which is why it's such a fantastic program to be a part of, because I get to work across lots of different spectrums and with lots of different people throughout the industry. But at the core of it, it's about uh long-term business sustainability, which is how we grow it, how we do it, and the people we look after. So we secured $2.13 million, which is like huge. Uh it's going to be used across three different big projects. The first one is around uh water enhancement with dam and uh riparian biodiversity and rehabilitation. Uh the second project is around sustainability certification and providing vouchers of $1,500 for that. But also within that project, there's a climate resilience and adaptation project, looking at businesses, working with businesses about their long-term climate risk and opportunities. And then the final sectional project is to do with natural capital approach and biodiversity and how we can use our land to create other opportunities of um uh economic value whilst improving the biodiversity on them. So it's quite a broad-ranging.

Kellie Tannock 27:23

That's a terrific achievement for West Australian wine. And thanks to my guests, Tim Quinlan and Eloise Jarvis, who helped demystify the wine harvest and all the action among the 130 plus wineries across the Margaret River region. S o topping up on your favourite wine from the bottle shop. That can be convenient, but I would encourage you to visit cellar doors for the experience of a wine tasting.