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In the Hunter, vintage starts early, and fruit for sparkling wine comes in first: usually in January, picked by hand before dawn at lower sugar and higher acid. Here is how harvest runs at Ember Hill and what you'll see if you visit.
The Hunter Valley vintage starts in January, and at a sparkling house it starts first. Fruit for traditional method wine is picked earlier than almost anything else in the valley, at lower sugar and higher acid, so at Ember Hill in Pokolbin our chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier usually come in during January, picked by hand before dawn. The still wines around us follow over the weeks after. If you visit in high summer, you're arriving while the year's most important work is under way.
A sparkling wine made by the traditional method ferments twice. The first fermentation makes a dry, still base wine. The second happens in the bottle, after yeast and a little sugar are added at tirage, and it lifts the alcohol again. So the base wine has to start lower than a table wine would.
Picking early does that. Grapes build sugar as they ripen and lose acid at the same time. A few weeks before a winemaker would pick the same chardonnay for a still white, the fruit has the balance we want: modest sugar, plenty of acid, flavours of lemon and green apple rather than peach.
Acid is what keeps a sparkling wine alive in the bottle. Our Blanc de Blancs spends five years on lees and the Late Disgorged ten. A wine without enough acid would turn flat and heavy over that time. With it, the wine stays fresh while the lees adds its toast and brioche. When Daniel Marsh, our chief winemaker, walks the rows in the days before harvest, acid is the number he watches most closely.
Our 14 hectares sit in three blocks on the slope below the ironstone ridge:
Each block ripens at its own pace, so harvest happens in passes rather than in one rush. Daniel tastes the fruit, checks sugar and acid, and calls each block when it's ready.
We pick in the dark and the first hour of light. January days in Pokolbin are hot, and warm fruit is harder to handle well. Cool grapes press more gently, oxidise less and keep their fresh flavour. Picking by hand lets the team take whole bunches and leave any damaged fruit behind. That matters most for the pinot noir and pinot meunier, because for a white sparkling the juice has to come away from the dark skins with as little colour as possible.
The bunches go to the press whole and are squeezed gently. The first, cleanest juice is the part we want for our cuvées. It settles, ferments in tank, and by autumn it's the base wine that each cuvée is built from. Our vineyard and method page follows the wine from there into bottle and down into the cellar.
Most of the picking is finished before the cellar door opens at 10am, so you won't usually see the pickers. You'll see what's left behind: the bins rinsed and stacked, the press working, nets being lifted off the rows, and a sharp smell of fresh juice around the winery. The vines are at their fullest and greenest, and the evenings are long.
The base wine is the closest thing to the new vintage you can taste. Every cellar door tasting includes a glass from tank, poured beside the four finished cuvées, and the contrast shows you what years on lees do. If you'd like to go further, the riddling room tour runs Friday to Sunday at 11am and 2pm and takes you into the cellar under the hill, where earlier vintages are resting at every stage.
Plan for the heat. Arrive in the morning, bring water and a hat, and book lunch at Lees for noon. If you're tasting, travel with a designated driver, a tour or a transfer.
Every vintage is a bet against the sky. In the Hunter the risks cluster in late summer:
Early picking helps a sparkling house here. Our fruit is often in before the worst of the late-summer weather arrives, and when a hot spell is forecast we can bring a block forward by a few days. Some years still test everyone. A vintage date on a bottle is a record of how that particular summer went.
The fruit picked this January won't be released as sparkling for years. Our Rosé spends three years on lees, the Blanc de Noirs six, and the Late Disgorged ten. So the bottle on the cellar door bench is a summer from well before this one, and the vintage being picked now is a promise for later.
That long wait is why our wine club members get first word on new releases. The rest of the time, the best way to taste a Hunter vintage at work is at the cellar door, with the base wine in one glass and a finished cuvée in the next.
Questions
Harvest in the Hunter runs through the hottest part of summer, starting in January and carrying on for several weeks after it, depending on the year and the grape. Fruit for sparkling wine comes in first because it's picked at lower sugar. At Ember Hill our chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier are usually picked in January, by hand, before dawn. A hot, dry season brings it forward and a cool one pushes it later.
A traditional method wine ferments twice. The second fermentation in the bottle adds alcohol, so the base wine has to start lower. Picking early keeps the sugar down and the acid up, and that acid is what keeps a sparkling wine fresh through years on its lees. Leave the same grapes another few weeks and you'd have a riper, rounder still wine, which isn't what we're making.
We pick before dawn, so most of the work is done by the time the cellar door opens at 10am. What you'll notice in January is the result: bins being washed, the press running, the smell of fresh juice around the winery and nets coming off the rows. The vineyard itself is a working site during vintage, so visitors stay on the paths and lawn.
It's hot, often in the thirties, so plan your day for the morning and bring water, a hat and sunscreen. The vines are full and green, the evenings are long, and wineries are busy with harvest. Book a tasting for 10am or 11am and an early lunch, and a cellar under a hill is a cool place to spend part of a summer afternoon.
Mostly the weather. Summer storms can bring heavy rain and hail just as fruit is nearly ripe, and warm, humid days after rain raise the risk of rot. A run of very hot days pushes sugar up fast and acid down, which matters most for sparkling base. Picking at night or before dawn, and moving quickly when the numbers are right, is how growers manage it.
Not as finished sparkling, because ours spends at least three years on lees before release. The closest you can get is the base wine. Every cellar door tasting, $20 for 45 minutes, includes a glass of base wine from tank alongside the four cuvées, so you taste the still, sharp wine that a vintage turns into before it goes into bottle for its second fermentation.
The cellar door is open every day from 10am. Walk in on a weekday, or book a tasting for the weekend.
