Congratulations
to Mark Ravenscroft. An article featuring Mark and Raven's Croft Wines appeared
in the October-November edition of Queensland Smart Farmer.
'Most
of my wines are made as natural as they can be. I use only the best quality
grapes, thereby ensuring minimal use of sulphur. I also use a lot of wild yeast
fermentation and do not add any powdered tannins. No animal products are used
and my wines are therefore vegan friendly'
Mark told Peter Scudamore-Smith.
The
new Strangebird and wine trail map has been released at the Brisbane Good Food
and Wine Show, so the Information Centre staff have been finding out a bit
about some of the alternative varieties.
Alternative
varieties are defined as those that represent not more than 1 % of the total
bearing vines in Australia This week we asked Peter from Boireann and Sam from
Golden Grove to tell us about Barbera.
'Barbera
is an Italian variety from the Piedmont region. It makes a deeply coloured
wine with intense flavours. It is high in natural acid but low-ish in
tannin consequently it is a good match for some food that would also go with
white wine. It is a great match also for Italian dishes that don’t necessarily
involve meat. We decided to grow Barbera because it’s Italian and we
love all things (wine and food) Italian. We also have other Italian varieties -
Sangiovese and Nebbiolo' says Peter.
'I
decided to plant Barbera because of its Italian origin- I was looking
at Italian varieties and decided to plant this one. There were a number
that I could have chosen. The performance of this variety looked impressive and
I was not wrong.It has performed really well for us here at Golden Grove' says Sam.
Wine-searcher
(online @ http://www.wine-searcher.com/grape-27-barbera)
reports that Barbera-based wines were a favourite with Savoyard army officers,
who considered the wine a ‘sincere companion’, which helped them maintain their
courage in battle.
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