About Trying and Almost Succeeding
This is a heavily disguised press release. Read on at the risk of being manipulated in ways you can not imagine, let alone detect. Its 6.30 in the morning and I'm staring into the computer screen. Today I'm off to Bulgaria to the village of Melnik. I've updated my last will and testament in case I don't make it back. I'm going there to look at Shiroka Melniska Losa, the 'Broad Leafed Vine of Melnik' and taste its wine. I have six plants in quarantine in Western Australia and I'm curious as to why the Bulgarians consider it to be their best. I know from my comparisons of the West Australian climate and vine growing areas in France that we are subject to much greater heat loads here in WA than one sees at similar average ripening temperatures in France, and Bulgaria shares that disadvantage.

Sometime in May we pick and preserve olives

I'm searching for thick skinned, late ripening grape varieties and I'm aware that there are three thousand varieties in Eurasia under five thousand names. I'm aware that nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Two hundred years ago Carminere was a very popular grape variety in Bordeaux. Who has heard of it today? Will Cabernet Sauvignon be equally obscure in the year 2198?

So I'm off for seven weeks to Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, France, Spain and Portugal. I'm growing Tempranillo which is the quality producer in Rioja in Northern Spain and I hope to see the wines before the Spanish wood it into obscurity.

I'm a punter. I look at the long term. I'm planting vines for my grandson and I hope he's interested. I hope he will observe that his grandfather had a few clues.

I'm growing vines in Dunsborough, have been for 20 years, and Karridale, coming up fifth year. The paper enclosed gives you a better idea of grape growing potential in these two places than anything hitherto available. It's part of a punters guide to the wine industry that I'm preparing. We aren't here for long enough to be selfish with it.

The wines included in this package are a sort of snapshot of the current state of my art.

The reds are wholly from Dunsborough and the white 60% from Karridale. First Vintage from Karridale was 1997. This year, 1998, we picked 55 tons and the birds picked about 25 tons. That makes for a challenging time in both vineyard and winery but we have lots of flavour in the Pinot, Merlot, Chardonnay, Verdelho, a Semillon of original power, and remarkable promise in the Grenache. I have over thirty varieties in the ground. Somebody has got to do the hard bits.

The Karridale blessing is the wind. It howls off the southern ocean in the hot months. It flattened a row of vines at he end of vintage. The gripfast posts gripped the ground all right but gave up at the first wire position. That wind will flatten thirty majestic Marri trees fifty metres in height and three hundred years old, in the winter. The southern hemisphere capes, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin all have a reputation for wild winds and seas and this is the latter. But, that wind is just a 25 Knot cooler in January and February, moist off the whitecaps and salty enough to carry a mist. That means Flavour with a capital F like you've never seen before. Grapes out in the sun, but cool. Now, there's a contradiction for you.

So, I'm an artist assembling my palette, a winemaker gathering flavours. I don't expect to ever be satisfied. To strive is better than to succeed. The magic is in the anticipation.

Erland Happ 13th May 1998