HOMELESS GRAPES ARE NOW RED WINE

DATELINE: McLaren Vale: HOMELESS GRAPES CHARITY EFFORT RAISES $36K

MORE COMING: Free run from the fermenters, with steel reflections, above: it smells and tastes intense, almost sinister. Long, dark and lithe. Mew.

Yangarra winemaker and rugby king Guillaume Camourgrand personally lifted those fermenters onto those grape bins this morning so the free run could flow through the sieves into the receival bins which you can see him putting into place below.

Once the free run was pumped from these receivers into a tank, Guillaume tipped the skins into a stainless steel basket, ready to be moved into the press. He used a forklift this time.

These pips, which have settled in the bottom of the fermenter, were kept out of the press: they'd make the wine bitter and tart. Here's Yangarra winemaker Shelley Torresan with Patrick Schwerdt of World Cooperage, who's donated some brilliant new French oak barrels for the Homeless Grapes maturation.

These computer-controlled presses are very gentle and can be adjusted to squeeze only the softest pressings from the skins. The first wine to emerge is the best, and was in this instance, brilliant in its elegant intensity and quality. It was confronting to realise how different in flavour and structure this wine is when compared to the Yangarra Shiraz, which grows in sand and ironstone. This wine from the Harvey family's vineyard near Willunga, grew in the Christie's Beach geology, which is all dark alluvial loams and clays.

The first pressings emerge, glorious in aroma and brilliant McLaren Vale Shiraz expression. Shelley set the press for a very soft squash, so all the pressings can be included in the final wine, to maximise volume while maintaining the best quality. 

The really good news is there's more wine than originally forecast, so the energetic crew at Vinomofo may have as much as an extra pallet of bottled wine to sell once the barrel selection is finalised and the wine is rendered to the oak - some new; some older - for a good long snooze. And here folks, is the Homeless Grapes Shiraz 2015, ready to head to barrel: no photoshopping - that's the reflection of a blue bucket ... it makes a trippy screensaver!!

Scan the March archive in the sidebar for the full story of this charity project, which has already put $36,000 in the bank for the Hutt Street Centre, a hardworking and financially hard-pressed charity organisation which looks after the homeless folks of Adelaide. All the labour and components have been donated; all photographs by Philip White.