The freshness of Autumn seems finally to be settling upon Cloof. After early morning rain today (and a light sprinkling last week) the winter grains are giving the landscape its annual makeover. The year’s first crop of mushrooms has made its appearance.

Our cellar team returns from a short break on Monday, and will immediately start taking the 2006 reds out of barrel. This wine will then be replaced with the 2007s that have been earmarked for this special treatment.

Barrel-ageing adds to the complexity of the wine, by contributing flavours from the spice, vanilla and mocca end of the spectrum. Simultaneously the wine picks up oak tannins from the barrels. These tannins are drier than fruit tannins, and are very useful for balancing the apparent sweetness of the very concentrated fruitiness we get in our wines. Also, oak is porous, so the wine undergoes a slow and gentle aeration that assists in rounding off the wine.

The desired objective is an harmonious whole, rather than a wine where the wood dominates. For this reason we make a careful selection of which wines are likely to best cope with this treatment.

We’re looking forward to an eight-fold increase in the volume of The Very Sexy Shiraz. The 2006 is looking even more promising than the multiple gold-medal winning 2004 did at the same stage.

Sadly, the volume of Crucible 2006 remains small, so there’ll only be about 4000 bottles to satisfy the entire world’s requirements.