Stage 17 It's over folks! Or is it.....? Bagnéres-de-Luchon to Peyragudes

Stage 16 & the haul up Col du Tourmalet was always going to produce a result one way or another.

Like many of our readers we were firmly clutching onto that last sliver of hope that somehow, and by some mysterious turn of fortune, Cadel Evans would be able to claw his way back as a real GC contender. Even if he managed to get all the Gods on his side, he would have needed more to evade the formidable SKY Train. What a team!

Lets hope Cadel can keep his chin up & not slide any further down the classifications. With the pressure off, hopefully we'll see some less conservative riding from him. Was very touching watching Cadel & big George ride across the line together at the end.

What a ride from Voeckler to steal the polka-dot jeursey. He is a machine. What about those facial expressions?

Tonight it's Stage 17, Bagnéres-de-Luchon to Peyragudes, the last in the Pyrenees. So what can we expect? It's short yet sharp with a couple of Cat 1's, a Cat 2, a Cat 3, a sprint and yeah there is the HC, a nasty 7.7% ave 11km climb to bust up the Peleton towards the end of the stage.

Will any one challenge the Sky boys? Nibali showed a bit of spirit last night & will be keen to challenge again to trim the 18 sec between himself & Froome in 2nd. Expect some action from the Liquigas lads.

Sagan has got the green in the bag, so all eyes will be on the breakaway for the KOM polka-dot jeursey. Rolland who earlier in the race had a crack at the jeursey himself will now help Voeckler (107pts) defend his slender lead over Kessiakoff (103 pts). Or will he?

OUR PICK: Voeckler for back to back wins & and another dozen or so new facial contortions...

DRINK MATCH: Given the chilly viewing conditions from the couch & our proximity to Spain lets leap over the Pyrenees into Tempranillo country & sip on any of the fantastic Thelmo Rodriguez reds from the north. His M2 de Matallana never fails.

AUSSIE MATCH: The Mayford Tempranillo out of NE Vic at Porepunkah is superb so to are some local versions in our own Pyrenees. Dog Rock the best of them.

MH Tour Blog Stage 16: The Epic Stage

OK Tourists, we're seriously into the Haute Pyrenees tonight with a couple of massive Hors Categorie climbs, including the infamous Col du Tourmalet at over 2km high! So unlike Schleckie, we recommend you stay off the diuretics and nestle in for a long one tonight with a glass of good red instead...

Profile c/o letour.fr

It could well be said that it's now or never for the GC competitors. With Wiggins well out ahead, this, and tomorrow night's stage will almost certainly see changes: either an extended margin on Froome, Nibali and Evans, or perhaps a comeback from the Italian and/or Aussie mountain-men.

We'll most likely see a few would-be climbers break out from the pack early, and within the Peloton the SKY riders will be working flat-out once again to protect Wiggo's lead from the likely assailants: Evans and Nibali. Both will fancy themselves on that massive descent into the finish, and we'll look forward to watching them with balls to the wall to close the Wiggins gap...

OUR PICK: Nibali to bring it in, hotly pursued by Evans, making up a minute or so on Wiggins....

DRINK MATCH:  Here in the French Pyrénées, it's time to get into Madiran: Usually mainly the Tannat grape (as its name suggests, plenty of tannin around a dark-berry fruit flavour), along with parcels of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Try: Domaine du Crampilh Madiran 


AUSSIE MATCH: If we're talking dark berry fruit and fine tannins in the heart of the Pyrenees... (the ones closer to home) ...then it might be time for a bit of our Mitchell Harris Pyrenees Cabernet Sauvignon 2009...perfect for a cold winter night watching little blokes go up big mountains....


And don't forget, for a little look at our Winter Reds, including the Cab, our new Mataro / Grenache / Shiraz, and the Pyrenees Sangiovese, get into our Winter Warmer Six-Pack - $120 for this month!

Our Pyrenees Cabernet...before it met the bottle.

It's off to Pau we Go! Stage 15 Samatan to Pau

Well folks, you wanted attacks, and all we got were tacks & lots of them. Bad puns aside, what a night of high drama! Stage 14 captured some of both the highs & lows that make this a truly remarkable sporting event.

The peleton lead by the yellow Wiggle showed great sportsmanship free-wheeling down Mur de Péguere to allow Cadel Evens & a dozen or so other punctured riders back to the main group. Pierre Rolland tried a bit of the 'I no speaker de English', and enjoyed his uncontested and short lived breakaway before toeing the line & getting swallowed up by the peleton. And unfortunately for Kiserlovski the tacks took him off to hospital & out of the race!

But what about that breakaway? Over 15 minutes clear of the peloton when the tack drama unfolded, it was Luis Leon Sanchez who broke away from the breakaway to get a well deserved victory.

So what does Stage 15 have in store for us?

It's back to Pau we go, & tonight it's one for the sprinters. This will probably sort out who's got their eye on the prize in Paris, or who's thinking of London.

Sagan is well clear in the battle for the green guersey, but will he have enough gas in the tank after his brilliant effort to cross the line in 2nd place in the hils last night?

Is Gossy gone? Griepel 'The Gorilla' loves to win, but watch out for the Manx Missile! I reckon Cav will want this win to make a statement to his rivals before London.

After yesterdays shenanigans, the GC boys will take it easy, as there is plenty more action in them there hills to come!

Our Pick: The Missile - Cavendish to show them who's the boss!

Drink match: After last night we need a drink - a real drink. We're in Armagnac country tonight! If that's a bit strong for you then there are plenty of interesting Vin-de-Pays in this part of France plus other small lesser know (but no less remarkable) appelations - try a Malbec from Cahors or a Tannat from the Madiran that'll be sure to add a few extra hairs to your chest.

Local Match: Try an Aussie Brandy such as the St Agnes 7 Star XO, a Malbec from Bleasdale or Ferngrove, or any other odd aussies you have lurking in your cellar!

Into the Pyrenees... MH Tour Blog Stage 14

Tonight we head from Limoux to Foix, in the foothills of the magnificent Pyrenees. It's only 40km from one to another, but the peloton are taking a bit of a 191km detour into the Haute Pyrenees with a couple of massive Category 1 climbs in the last half of the day's ride.

The final climb is still over 40km from the finish, so I doubt we'll see the GC contenders have a real crack, instead aiming not to lose any time. We'll most likely see one of the out-of-contention climbers have a major dip at a breakaway.

OUR PICK: Whilst Schleck and Gesink have the climbing pedigree, we fancy someone like Jurgen Van den Broeck, who looked pretty strong in the Alps a few nights ago.

DRINK MATCH: In the foothills of the Pyrenees, Limoux was actually the first place in France to produce sparkling wine, and they still make some excellent bubbles, particularly Crémant de Limoux. One of the biggest producers is fairly easy to find in Oz, so try a Sieur d'Arques Aimery Crémant de Limoux 1531.

AUSSIE MATCH: Hmmm....what could we Mitchell Harris boys suggest as a great bubbles made in the foothills of the Pyrenees here in Australia???....

That's right, another plug for our new bubbles, SABRE by MITCHELL HARRIS Vintage 2008!

Drop us an email at: info@mitchellharris.com.au if we can interest you in trying it out bottle or two...

Atop the Sabre Tanker Truck: another Vintage 2012 panorama

Today we brought our Chardonnay base from the Macedon Ranges up to our Pyrenees winery where it will embark on a journey toward becoming our Sabre sparkling.
The Pinot base is already fermenting well, and it looks like a good vintage for sparkling wines this year...

Click on the image for a closer look....

Stomping the Mitchell Harris Shiraz

Getting in the whole-bunch spirit, Johnno gets right into stomping our 2012 Pyrenees Shiraz.

Warning: may contain scenes of whole-body pigeage!!!

Off and Picking... another cool panorama

Another cool panorama of a short lunch break as we kick off Vintage 2012 picking our Sauvignon Blanc.

Beautiful vineyard here in the Moonambel Hills...

JH

PS Click on the pic for a bigger, better 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

A walk through the vineyard

The Peerick Vineyard at Moonambel

 Great to have a walk through the gorgeous Peerick vineyard out of Moonambel today. What a great little oasis in the Pyrenees! Vineyard looking great. Disease free so far... 
Cabernet almost through flowering.
Looks like lower yields this year which will hopefully translate into some good concentration of flavour.
Fingers crossed for more sunny days like today!!

The Mitchell Harris 2012 Fumé 

Mitchell Harris Wines at Spring Graze Ballarat

A few pictures from a great night at Lydiard Wine Bar this week. Spring Graze was a satellite event of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and showcased the best of fresh spring produce along with the range of Mitchell Harris wines.

We hand-disgorged a dozen bottles of our new sparkling, Sabre, which was served with fresh plump oysters. The dry, aperitif style was a brilliant match for this seafood canapé.

A Thai salad of spanner crab showed off chef Damien Jones' heritage in Thai cuisine brilliantly, and was matched with our 2011 Sauvignon Blanc Fumé, and our 2011 Rosé.

Through the night we patched in Johnno from his wine-show judging in Canberra, to introduce the sneak preview of Sabre. A great way to bring him in as a part of the evening, but obviously he would have preferred to indulge....

An incredible main of a rare rolled roast of Goldfields Spring Lamb was some of the best lamb I've ever tasted, and a brilliant centrepiece with our reds, 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2009 Shiraz.

And a sublime way to finish the night was a dessert of blue cheese, pear and apple, matched with the fruit richness of our Special Release Muscat.

Make sure if you get a chance to drop into Lydiard Wine Bar in Ballarat

Special thanks to Alicia's sister Sally for the gorgeous images...

 www.sallymckay.com.au 

Pressing off the Mitchell Harris Mataro

Some quick phone-cam snaps of putting our juicy and silky Pyrenees Mataro through the little basket press today.

The 2011 Mataro is a beaut little parcel of Pyrenees fruit that is already tasting delicious, and will no doubt form the basis of a brand new Mitchell Harris release  next year or beyond.

Cheers Johnno!

Vintage 2011...Bringing in the Mitchell Harris Shiraz

As we lift the cover off the open- fermenter, it's a delicious wave of fruit aroma that wafts out. Like a berry compote dessert and a hint of white pepper to spice it up.


Yep, our 2011 Shiraz is picked, and fermenting away....

In a beautiful little valley in the Moonambel hills there's a patch of Shiraz in a corner of the vineyard, that we noticed last year had some terrific plump bunches of spicy grapes hanging. So for this vintage we thought... "let's have a bit of that!"



Picked last week, the fruit gave us everything we were hoping for... Yummy redcurrant fruit with that zing of pepper on the nose and palate.

A few hundred kilos of Viognier grapes from a few adjacent rows has been tossed in to give just a little lift to those fruit



So, from here, it's a real "Hands-off" approach. Wild ferment, then into a combination of our new and old French oak hogsheads for about 18 months.
And not much else...!




We hope we can leave the fruit to do the talking, and perhaps come up with a delicious, spicy, ever-so-slightly-funky Pyrenees Shiraz true to that little corner of the little vineyard in the little valley up past Moonambel...

Just a minute... The Mitchell Harris 2011 Rosé

We've just pressed off our Pinot Noir, sourced from both the Pyrenees and Macedon Ranges, which in addition to being part of our Sabre sparkling, will be incorporated into our 2011 Mitchell Harris Rosé.

Here Mitch and Johnno have a quick minute-long look at the new juice, which is just about to go into barrel to create our rosé.

Crowd-sourcing the new Mitchell Harris Sangiovese

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In the sensational Pyrenees red-wine vintage of 2010, we were lucky enough to get our hands on some terrific Sangiovese fruit from Shays Flat, near Landsborough on the western edge of the Pyrenees.

An offer too good to pass up, it left us with a little bit of a problem; we'd never made Sangiovese before!

So, what to do? First, we bled off some of the juice in a saignée fashion, to create about half of our Mitchell Harris Rosé 2010 (the other half being Macedon Pinot Noir.) The remainder has now been maturing in old oak hogsheads for about a year now, and it's time to work out what to do with it!

Options included :

• Doing nothing, bottling up as is...

• Blending with some beautiful Pyrenees Shiraz for some bright fruit.

• And/or blending in some Cabernet Sauvignon in a Super-Tuscan style.

With thanks to Anthony d'Anna at Boccaccio Cellars in Melbourne, we put together a bunch of great Australian Sangioveses, and some Italian Chiantis to match the Mitchell Harris offerings against.

It was time to get some clever heads and palates together...

We gathered a few folk together, some from the wine & food scene here in Ballarat, a couple of Sangio-loving medicos and even a couple of ex-Sommeliers for a blind benchmark tasting.

Nine great wines were tasted, and what did we find?

• Australia has some absolutely brilliant Sangioveses, that match it with the Italians any day...

• The straight Mitchell Harris Sangiovese was very much a favourite, and certainly more popular than our blended trials.

• We should all be drinking more of this great food matching wine.

So do yourself a favour, get some Sangiovese into your cellar or onto your table, and while you're at it, keep an eye out for the "crowd-sourced" Mitchell Harris Pyrenees Sangiovese 2010!

Happy New 2011!

A quick note to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR from the Mitchell Harris Crew.

Thanks for a terrific year in 2010, a year where:

• We were lucky to have a brilliant vintage in the Pyrenees, truly one to remember for our red wine. 
• We discovered a great blend of fruit zing and savoury tannins in our 2010 Pinot Noir/Sangiovese Rosé.
• The addition of a terrific aged Muscat to the Mitchell Harris Wines portfolio
• Mitchell Harris Wines moved into even more of Melbourne and Victoria's best restaurants and bars.
• We continued to gain some great reviews in the press and blogs, and achieved James Halliday's Wine Companion 5-star status in only our second year.

The fun won't stop this year, with plans ahead for:

• A promising Pyrenees vintage, with our fruit in the Moonambel Hills surviving our spring deluges without wet feet or any other problems.
• Mitchell Harris Footy Tipping, bigger and better than ever!
• Sabre by Mitchell Harris, the release of our long-awaited sparkling wine.
• Plenty of events and great drinking ahead.

For now, Cheers to you all , and happy drinking!

Follow that Cab....

Ok, so after a few weeks fermenting in our big new shiny open-top fermenters, the 2010 Mitchell Harris Cabernet has been drained out, and hits the presses today. Nice work Johnno, you deserve a beer.

Beautiful fruit from our Moonambel vineyard looks like it'll make one of our best vintages yet, and now set for a stint in our snappy new French Oak barrels.

Stay tuned for more progress...

Not long now.

A bit of recent heat has brought out some colour amongst the reds throughout the Pyrenees. Looks like about 3-4 weeks until we'll start picking, and the Vintage bandwagon will roll out.

A last bit of respite before the madness begins...