Last chance for Mitchell Harris Footy Tipping!! The Siren is sounding....

MITCHELL HARRIS FOOTY TIPPING - BACK FOR 2011!

Yes, tipsters, can you believe it?

IT'S FOOTY TIME AGAIN!!!

The balmy summer is over, Gold Coast has joined the ranks and the St Kilda boys have got their balls out ready for round 1...

Let the season begin!

What other footy tipping comp offers you the chance to win a bottle of wine from one of Victoria's top producers~

 EVERY SINGLE WEEK!!

Plus heaps of side comps and prizes during the year and a ripper but yet to be announced final prize!

So, for all our tipsters from last year, all you have to do is login here with last year's username and password and reactivate your account. Get on there, update any details, add a picture if you want...

 HOW TO JOIN

For all new tipsters simply click here and use the password plugger to join the Mitchell Harris Mates competition. 

Alternatively, you can head to www.footytips.com.au and search for the Mitchell Harris Mates comp to join.

Then enter your details and you are set to tip!

And just e-mail 

info@mitchellharris.com.au 

with any questions or problems logging in.

Picking the Pinot... Vintage 2011 gets underway

After our 2011 summer of discontent, it's finally come time to start on Vintage 2011! First off the rank is our sparkling fruit, which, after surviving a season of floods and humidity, has benefited from a nice slow ripening period.

The (finally) ripe bunches of Pinot Noir.

As you can see, our Macedon Pinot Noir fruit looks terrific, thanks to some hard work in the vineyard, nestled in the northern foothills of the Macedon Ranges.

Mitchell Harris gathers its Pinot Noir near Kyneton in the north of the Macedon Ranges.

Pressed and processed, it's then back up to the Pyrenees for fermentation and to have Johnno work his magic on it over the next few months.

John Harris surveying the 2011 crop

At that stage, the Pinot will be blended with our Chardonnay fruit, and tiraged into bottle to spend the next three or more years on lees, after which it can be disgorged to make our "Sabre by Mitchell Harris" sparkling.

Those with less patience will see the Pinot Noir pressings blended with our Pyrenees Sangiovese to create our second Rosé release, later in 2011.

MITCHELL HARRIS FOOTY TIPPING - BACK FOR 2011!

Yes, tipsters, can you believe it?

IT'S FOOTY TIME AGAIN!!!

The balmy summer is over, Gold Coast has joined the ranks and the St Kilda boys have got their balls out ready for round 1...

Let the season begin!

What other footy tipping comp offers you the chance to win a bottle of wine from one of Victoria's top producers~

 EVERY SINGLE WEEK!!

Plus heaps of side comps and prizes during the year and a ripper but yet to be announced final prize!

So, for all our tipsters from last year, all you have to do is login here with last year's username and password and reactivate your account. Get on there, update any details, add a picture if you want...

 HOW TO JOIN

For all new tipsters simply click here and use the password plugger to join the Mitchell Harris Mates competition. 

Alternatively, you can head to www.footytips.com.au and search for the Mitchell Harris Mates comp to join.

Then enter your details and you are set to tip!

And just e-mail 

info@mitchellharris.com.au 

with any questions or problems logging in.

PS: Want to enter your tips with your mobile phone? 

Download the footytips app here!

Mitchell Harris Wines and the iPad

With the release of the iPad today, we thought we'd explain how here at Mitchell Harris as we've incorporated the iPad into our everyday workflow. With a couple of iPads, our iPhones, home and work computers and some cloud technology we can all stay in touch, have up-to-date figures at hand, and stay on top of sales and marketing.








A few of the benefits of bringing the iPad into Mitchell Harris Wines:

Saving trees and the clutter of paper tasting notes and pricing documents. On our trade visits, sommeliers and wine-buyers can peruse prices and winemaking information without piles of paper being printed out and cluttering up offices and bars. Winemaking info is always at hand when showing the wines.
Any documents that sommeliers want to keep can be emailed through immediately.

Staying on top of inventory. We know continuously where stock is being sent, and what remains in the warehouse or winery at any particular time.

Sales orders can be sent through immediately to the warehouse, and invoices generated, receipts sent, all pretty much at the site of the sale.

Using the Apps such as Numbers, we can work on our production or sales spreadsheets on a train or anywhere, continuously uploading them to our "cloud," where we can all contribute at any time.

Our photo library becomes a "stock library" where we have access to Mitchell Harris images (such as bottle images,) that we can then use in blogs, emails or the like. (It also looks terrific as a slideshow when out pouring and selling booze!)

Getting photos onto the iPad is really easy with the camera connector, then editing them with Photogene, CameraBag or something similar we can share great images in no time.

Blogging (I'm writing this on the ipad using BlogPress now) or staying in touch via Twitter or Facebook is obviously a doddle with the iPad, and makes good use of the odd spare moment. So too is replying to emails whilst out and about.

It's an ultimate note-pad / diary / ideas depository.

A bit of down-time whilst on the road is easily filled with some books on iBooks or a couple of mags on the Zinio app.

So there are just a few ways the iPad has helped a tiny winemaking business like ours, love to hear if you've any great ideas or tips.

And, of course, here's our fearless winemaker, John Harris using a massive spreadsheet during his trial of the brand new iPad...





Stick to the fermenters and barrels JH!

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!

Steamed Murray Cod with Tomato Nahm Jim - matched with Mitchell Harris Sauvignon Blanc Fumé

Ralph Kyte-Powell, John Harris, Alla Wolf-Tasker & Claire Winton Burn at the Daylesford Regional Producers' Day at the Lake House.

As promised, the recipe from Masterchef's Claire Winton Burn that matched so beautifully with our Mitchell Harris Sauvignon Blanc Fumé 2010 at the Daylesford Regional Producers' Day last weekend.

Steamed Murray Cod with Tomato Nahm Jim

Serves 2

2 x 150g Loddon Valley cod fillets, skin removed

Murray River sea salt, to taste

2 cloves Australian garlic, chopped

2 coriander roots, carefully washed and coarsely chopped

1 long red chilli, coarsely chopped

1 long green chilli, coarsely chopped

8 ripe cherry tomatoes, coarsely chopped

2 small (or 1 large) red shallot

1 small green chilli, finely sliced (you can substitute a small red chilli if green ones are not available)

3 tablespoons palm sugar, shaved

2 tablespoons Megachef brand fish sauce

60 ml lime juice

Coriander leaves, to serve

• To prepare the nahm jim, combine the garlic and coriander root in a mortar and use the pestle to pound into a coarse paste Add the long chillies and pound to a fine paste. Add the tomatoes and pound until just pulped, then add the small green chilli, the shallots, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice and stir to dissolve Taste the nahm jim for a balance of heat, saltiness, sourness and sweetness, adjusting as necessary Set aside until ready to serve.

• To steam the cod, place the fillets on some baking paper in a steamer. Cover, and steam until just cooked through (about four minutes).

• Meanwhile, place a generous amount of the nahm jim on each plate. Once the fish is cooked, place it on top, then drizzle with a little extra nahm jim and top with some coriander leaves.

• Serve immediately with a crunchy salad and some steamed rice. 

Mitchell Harris Sauvignon Blanc Fumé - matching with Thai-style Murray Cod

A quick (shaky, noisy) minute-or-so-long vid of our winemaker John Harris talking to wine-reviewer Ralph Kyte-Powell of The Age Epicure.

This was taken at the Daylesford Regional Producers' Day at the Lake House in Daylesford, brilliantly put together by the lady of the lake, Alla Wolf-Tasker.

Masterchef's Claire Winton Burn put together some beautiful Thai-inspired flavours to go with her luscious steamed Murray Cod.

Have a look at John explain why the Fumé style of Sauvignon Blanc might pair up a little better than what some of you may expect from the "Savalanche" of fruit-bomb style savvies...

We'll try to chase up Claire's recipe if possible...

...and yes, we've told John he needs a double-barrelled surname if he wants to keep matching it with stars like this!...