Bloodwood Goss

Established 1983 & still standing                                         Shiraz  2001                            Bloodwood Wines Cellar Door

A Quick History

---

                 Where on Earth is Bloodwood?

        Bloodwood is located at latitude 33 degrees and 15 minutes South and longitude 149 degrees and 2 minutes East at an elevation of between 810 m (2657 ft) and 860 m (2,809 ft) above sea level in the wonderful Orange sub region of the Central Ranges GIC of New South Wales, Australia. Tell your taxi driver we are 275 kms (165 miles) west, north-west of Sydney; sit back and relax!

So how do you find us?

Dirt-Data and Day-Degrees
            The vineyard is located on the mid slopes of a free standing, north and easterly facing headland comprised of some of the oldest soils on this planet. Low vigour soils of calcareous laminated silt stone, greywake and limestone breccia overlying a friable red clay base and a deeply fissured Middle Ordovician volcanoclastic parent material provide an ideal environment for the manageable growth of vines in what is a soft, cool and sunny continental Australian environment. Annual rainfall averaging a little over 750 mm is, historically,  winter dominant, with the ripening months of February, March and April traditionally  the driest. (No one mentions vintage 2000 or 2007) Although we can experience several snow falls during winter and into spring, the mean temperature of 20 degrees C (70 degrees F) for January helps bring the mean annual temperature up to a comfortable 12.8 degrees C. As averages by definition are numbers which rarely exist in the real world, we do insure our vineyard against the ever present threat of Australian drought. We judiciously use  supplemental irrigation water which we harvest from the slopes of Bloodwood and apply when extraordinarily dry periods occur at crucial times of the vine's annual cycle. We use about 1 megalitre of water per hectare per year for this purpose.

---

Viticulture

        Our viticulture is ecologically non-invasive and no insecticides have ever been used on or near the vineyard. All vines are hand pruned (mostly by Stephen) and hand-picked. Light supplementary irrigation is applied when necessary and mildews are controlled through preventative elemental Copper and Sulfur applications during most growing seasons.. All vines are trellised using V.S.P. (vertical shoot positioning) or adapted Scott-Henry systems to assist excellent light and air penetration of the canopy. Great care is taken to work closely with nature in our vineyard and our medium term goal is to leave as small a negative footprint on the environment as possible. While viticulture is considered to be a clean and green activity by today's abysmal agricultural standards, we at Bloodwood are aware of our continuing responsibility as a part of our beautiful and fragile environment.

Wine Making

        With a fermentation capacity of 75,000 litres Bloodwood is hardly a blip on the weigh-bridge of the Australian wine industry and our annual production of  about 4000 cases of wines over 7 or 8 styles means that our wines are pretty hard to find away from the cellar door. As with the vineyard, we try to allow the fruit to express itself fully in the wine, and we have a minimally interventionist philosophy towards  wine making. Sulfur levels are kept to a minimum effective dose  throughout the preparation of each wine and all winery wastes are re-cycled through the vineyard. When transferring wines about the cellar, the design of the facility allows us to use gravity in many cases. The red styles usually undergo some post fermentation maceration, while the whites are exclusively whole-bunch pressed as we find this method is the most gentle on the fruit. We believe the art of good wine making is having the knowledge and experience to know  when to do nothing. We use exclusively French oak hogsheads for maturation of both whites and reds at Bloodwood.

---

Bottling & Packaging

All Bloodwood wines are bottled and packaged on-site at the winery. This is always an interesting exercise, especially using tractor mounted fork lifts on sloping ground in sometimes wet weather. But it sure beats the alternative of  attempting to truck finished wine off site for final bottling and packaging.  We use  Jac paper labels printed by Impresstik Pty Ltd; cartons by Centa Pac Enterprises of Molong; ROTE capsules ; and French antique bottles supplied through John Haines of Mc Carthy's Pty Ltd.

        Every small family winery in Australia these days is of necessity a co-operative. Friends and family are what keeps small wineries like Bloodwood out of the clutches of the Corporates.  So be warned..If you turn up at Bloodwood, you may well get a job! Some of the many important people in the Bloodwood story so far are here publically acknowledged and sincerely thanked. Bloodwood's distinctive label, packaging and stationery design is by our highly talented friend Wayne Harris. (Phone/Fax 02-95172896). Wayne is an internationally recognised graphic designer, children's book illustrator and fine artist who has been an important part of both our lives for 40 years. Visitors to the cellar door have had the pleasure of witnessing a magnificent steadily growing mural which is being periodically painted by Wayne. Eric Yuen (Phone 02,96602348), who doubles as bottle opener at the annual F.O.O.D. Affair,  had his job description re-written by Carol to include that of architect extraordinare, and from the picture of the cellar door above it's easy to see what astounding talent he has. The long-suffering Dorothy  is our accountant in all but remuneration, and  given what has passed as reform in that department of Australian small business life this past few awful years, we feel truly sorry for those wineries which don't have a Dot to eye all the t's without getting cross. Warwick, Dot's main squeeze, likes planting trees with his boy Andrew who over the years has transformed Bloodwood from the clapped out drought-ridden range lice emporium it was to the very pleasant place it is today. Our particular friend Irene is always on hand to do impersonations of us if we need her to and she is just the best person to be around.

Distribution within Australia

        Word-of-mouth means Bloodwood has an active cellar door and mailing list through which most of our wine is sold. Our one retail outlet is the original Ian Cook's Five Ways Cellars in Paddington, Sydney, (ph 02 93604242) and you will find us on an increasing number of quality restaurants across Australia. Everyone who visits Bloodwood is co-opted into being a proselytizer on our behalf, so be warned!

Distribution UK

        For our pains, we are confused to report that Bloodwood can occasionally be found in the United Kingdom courtesy of Mark Savage MW  and the team at:

Savage Selection Limited        Savage Limited Selection

Our history	Wine growing	Wine making	Wine styles	Wine events	Wine orders	Wine links