Mitchell Harris Urban Cellar Door - The Progress so far...

The creation of our new urban cellar door is well underway this week as we tackled the walls and floors, 120 years of dust, grease and sweat blown away with some high-pressure water, revealing red brick walls which have kept their patina of years of workshop and produce store history.

See some of the pictures of the workshop prior to kicking off HERE

Over the next few weeks, our hoardes of builders, craftsmen and designers will march on in and create our Cellar Door, which we hope will be open early in the spring.

Mitchell Harris Macedon Vineyard Panorama

Another little panorama, this time our Macedon vineyard with it's nicely laden Chardonnay vines, which we'll be picking tomorrow for our flagship sparkling, Sabre by Mitchell Harris.

Click on the image for a larger view...

The Winery at Rest...A Panorama

With the first day of picking tomorrow, the winery is poised, ready to roll.
A little panorama of the last day of rest before Vintage 2012...
Cheers,
Johnno

The Mitchell Harris Winery (-to-be) ...a sneak peek!

The great old facade of our new Mitchell Harris home.

This month we've made some terrific new leaps ahead in the Mitchell Harris adventure. One of the most exciting is the purchase of a new headquarters for Mitchell Harris Wines. Hopefully over the next few months to a year we'll see the advent of a new urban Cellar Door, and a warehouse and cellar for our goods, and potentially even start doing some of our smaller batch winemaking right here in the middle of Ballarat!

The old ledger book circa 1896

We've been lucky enough to find a terrific old shop and warehouse that started life as a stables / livery in the 1890s, and became what was probably one of Ballarat's first motor garages around the time of WW1. It spent the next few decades as a canvas / tent-maker's workshop, and since the mid-70s has been an electrical motor workshop.

Heaps of great old Victorian details (in need of some love...)

Our new home is right in the middle of Ballarat's CBD.

A panorama view of Ballarat from the back balcony.

Tons of character, tons of history and tons of space. Just what we need...

The cluttered but characterful front-of-house, hopefully soon-to-be our Cellar Door.

Johnno's new world in the old bluestone stables / garage / workshop (WINERY!!)

Over the next few months we'll post more pics and let you know as soon as you pop in for a glass or two!

Wine Industry Smallgoods Smackdown - making the Mitchell Harris entries...

After growing a couple of porkers ourselves in the first part of the year, then despatching them a couple of weeks ago, it was time to put our beautiful home-grown, free-range pork into use in some smallgoods.

Last night we put together these salamis and chorizos as seen here in the video....

In a few weeks these products will head off to compete in WISS ... the Wine Industry Smallgoods Smackdown... against meat tasties from other winemakers throughout the country.

Wish us luck, and enjoy the video, with a soundtrack "Hours" by talented Ballarat musos Dan Houlihan & Brett Augustine.

Apres le déluge... Lake Wendouree full again.

Just a few scenes here from the morning jog around Lake Wendouree in our home town of Ballarat.

An empty Lake Wendouree in 2008

After a week where we have scored almost half the year's average rainfall, Lake Wendouree has filled for the first time since 2002. In the intervening years it has been something between a puddle and a dustbowl in the middle of town, and it is fantastic to see the lake 75mm above capacity and looking beautiful.

Here are a few shots from my morning run, taken and edited "on-the-run" on my iPhone...