Pregled posta

Marketing

An old Champaign Magnum machine used to take the yeast plug out of the wine. This is in the cellars of the Seppelt winery in Great Western, the Grampians, Victoria, Australia.
We visited on Wednesday, and there are reports today that the whole town of Great Western has been evacuated due to flood waters....

The Seppelt Drives are truly one of the most historic and unique treasures of the Australian Wine Industry.

Joseph Best built a large winery in 1868 and during the excavations he came across a deep layer of decomposed granite under the winery and commissioned some unemployed gold-miners to tunnel through the soft rock to create the famed “drives” of today.

The atmosphere is eerie in this underground relic of the last century, this silent maze of dimly lit arched tunnels. The miners had built a storage facility with a natural airflow equivalent to that of modern air-conditioning. The temperature is a constant 15 degrees Celsius and the humidity 80 per cent. A silky, black, web-like mould, called aspergillus niger or common French mould, covers every surface in the underground cellars. The mould neither hinders nor helps the maturation process of the wines and withers and dies within seconds of being exposed to strong light. Thick dust and undisturbed cobwebs cover stacks of wine. Occasionally the cellars open out into spaces the size of large rooms. These spaces have on occasion, been used for grand candle lit dinners

Over the years, a succession of famous personalities have visited the cellars and, on some special occasions, the distinguished visitor has bestowed his or her name on one of the underground drives. In 1903, Lord Hopetoun, the first Governor-General of Australia, opened a new drive. In 1910 the Dame Nellie Melba Drive was opened. The Seppelt family were the owners of the property when Lady Sommers, the wife of the then Victorian Governor General, opened the Lady Sommers Drive in 1928. Governors Lord Huntingfield in 1934 and Sir Dallas Brookes in 1950 also have drives bearing their names. The drives have a total length of 3 kilometres and are regarded as a priceless heritage recognised by the Victorian National Trust.

The Bell Miner, Manorina melanophrys, colloquially known as the Bellbird, is a colonial honeyeater endemic to southeastern Australia. They were given their common name because they feed almost exclusively on the dome-like coverings of certain psyllid bugs, referred to as "bell lerps," that feed on eucalyptus sap from the leaves. The "bell lerps" make these domes from their own honeydew secretions in order to protect themselves from predators and the environment.

Bell miners are aggressive birds that defend their colony area communally, excluding most other passerine species. They do this in order to protect their territory from other insect-eating birds that would eat the bell lerps they live off of. Whenever bell miners undergo a population boom, the local forests die back due to increased lerp psyllid infestations.

In some Aboriginal tribes the Bell miner is considered a special delicacy which is highly valued. The Bell Miner is ritually sacrificed by having the head removed and pickled or embalmed while the body or "Peese" (Pronounced "piece") is eaten after being skinned. After being pickled the head is used in native medicines.
The Bell Miner is the smallest of the miners and is a medium-large and solidly built honeyeater. It is mostly olive-green, with a short, down-curved, bright yellow bill, a red-orange bare eye patch and orange-yellow feet and legs. It has a squared off tail. Males are slightly larger, but otherwise the sexes are similar. Young birds are duller and browner, with a paler eye patch. More often heard than seen, the Bell Miner lives in large colonies and aggressively defend their territories against all intruders. Also commonly known as Bellbirds.