Catch up wth Alkina on Channel 7's SA Weekender

If you missed our appearance on Channel 7's SA Weekender a few weeks back, here's another chance. Enjoy!

Vintage 2021

(The vintage surprise: Red and White Semillon harvested together from one of our young blocks)

2021 represents an outstanding vintage for Alkina across our 43 hectares of organic and biodynamically grown vines in northern Greenock. We have seen elevated levels of natural acidity, tannin, flavour and colour thanks to the long, cool later part of the growing season.

Good early winter and early spring rains raised hopes of good soil moisture levels but overall this didn’t quite follow through and it was a dry season again. Post Christmas we were blessed with cool, even days and a long, slow, even ripening period where phenolic development was in line with both sugars and flavour.

We started picking Semillon on 20th February (a couple of days later than V20, which was early) and finished with Mataro on 31st March. We had a two week burst of busy picking at the start and then cool nights slowed everything down. Yields were very good for everything except Grenache, which suffered some losses during a hot, windy flowering period. Quality looks to be excellent across the board with firm tannins and intense flavour concentration suggesting these will be wines with very long futures ahead of them.

TASTING AUSTRALIA - Alkina Long Lunch with Charlie Arnott and Mark McNamara - Wed 5th May - SOLD OUT

TASTING AUSTRALIA: Alkina Long Lunch with Charlie Arnott and Mark McNamara - Wed 5th May, 11:00am – 4pm. Ticket: $175 - SOLD OUT

Discover Alkina, meet Charlie Arnott, enjoy a delicious long lunch and learn about organic and biodynamic winegrowing in Greenock in the Barossa's Western Ranges.

You'll walk the vineyard rows and explore soil pits, before enjoying canapés and a tasting of Alkina's rarest terroir wines. Alkina has undertaken a unique and detailed terroir study to identify tiny parcels of old vine Grenache and Shiraz planted on different rock and soils types within the vineyard. We hand pick and vinify these 'Polygons' separately and you'll be able to taste these special wines, see the rocks and understand the special relationship between place and wine.

Then it's onto a long table in the Courtyard for a fabulous 3 course meal cooked over fire by Barossa legend, Mark McNamara, featuring the very best local Barossa and SA produce and suppliers. With Alkina's wines matched to the food and with magnums flowing, we'll enjoy a yarn with Charlie as we go.

Charlie is an award-winning grazier from Boorowa, New South Wales, Australia, an educator and passionate advocate for Regenerative Farming practices. His family business has developed under Charlie’s guidance from a ‘conventional’, industrial high input mixed enterprise farm working against nature to a biodynamically principled holistically managed farm partnering with nature. His podcast - The Regenerative Journey - is compulsive listening.

Having only recently opened, Alkina is a new story on an old place. It’s a journey through ancient stones and soils, organic and biodynamic viticulture, small scale winemaking and the creation of unique micro-terroir wines, all grown and made on our estate in the Western Barossa ranges. Alkina seeks to make wine that is an expression of place; pure, authentic, terroir wines from healthy vines in healthy soils. Alkina sits on the traditional lands of the Ngadjuri people. We acknowledge the Ngadjuri people as the traditional owners of this land and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.

Tasting Australia: Alkina Long Lunch with Charlie Arnott and Mark McNamara

Wed 5th May

11:00am – 4pm

Ticket: $175 SOLD OUT

Dietary Requirements catered for.

Return transport can be arranged from Adelaide (at extra cost).

2021...with a sense of wonder

(Photograph: Mike Smith)

2020 has gone. I think we’re all okay with that idea. It was a big year for Alkina, coming to life after 6 years of building behind the scenes. But we look forward…

What of 2021 and beyond? What are we changing, building, challenging right now? We’re already well into our terroir journey but there is a mountain of learning still to do.

As a winemaker you get one chance each year. You have to take your chance, take risks, learn from failures and then build up your knowledge base for the year ahead.

In the vineyard you get a new chance every day. Granted you can’t see the fruit of your labours until harvest time, but every day you can see the life in the vineyard and in the soil. All you have to do is look. Look and ask yourself questions.  

Tim was working in the vineyard one night, on the Kubota, lights on. He tells the tale that the air was so thick with bugs, flies, mosquitos and spiders webs that it was like another world. What a magical thing, to have a vineyard literally swamped with life? You can’t necessarily see it all during the daytime but you can feel it. You can feel the energy. 

We can't make terroir-driven wines in dead soils. We can't control everything in the vineyard, and that's okay. We can observe, learn and adapt, working in harmony with nature rather than seeking dominion over it. 

David Orr, the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College in Ohio wrote “If literacy is driven by the search for knowledge, ecological literacy is driven by the sense of wonder, the sheer delight in being alive in a beautiful, mysterious, bountiful world.” 

So before we get into the detail of what we’re up to, it’s worth taking a moment on New Year’s Day to remember that ‘sense of wonder’ in our lives. Where do you see it? Where are you looking? We always try to remember it when we’re working in the vineyard, however hard it is, or however crushing the latest obstacle is. For here lays the basis of terroir, in its most wondrous, natural iteration.