Cassilis Estate Wine and Cider in Cassilis, Victoria | Agriculture

Cassilis Estate Wine and Cider

Locality: Cassilis, Victoria

Phone: +61 488 096 112

Address: 1314 Cassilis Road 3898 Cassilis, VIC, Australia

Website: http://www.cassilisestate.com/

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• Winery/Vineyard
• Agriculture

25.01.2022 We have the first truss in place! After a few hours with a combination of chainsaw and chisel we finally got the post mortised out to take the 2 beams that will support the rafters and trusses. Pretty happy with how it turned out.

23.01.2022 The roof is on! A big couple of days but we finally have a roof on the winery. We are extremely happy with how it looks and with the job done by our roofers. Craig and Dave. A top temperature of 33C today but they stuck at it! A few more screws to go into the ridge capping. Flashing and guttering to come but we're calling it done. This is actually the first building where we've designed it ourselves and have done all the framing so we a little chuffed with how it looks. We will post some more photos tomorrow but in the meantime this is the view from the front verandah of our house.

23.01.2022 First time grafting apples and we are very happy with the results. We sourced some MM106 rootstock from Maple Grove nursery in Tasmanian and were very impressed... with the quality. We were after some scion as well but we were a bit late getting our order in so had to use some from our own trees. We weren't that happy with our scion as we had already pruned but ended up with sufficient to do 30 grafts. (33 as it turned out as they put some extra in.) Varieties are Somerset Red Streak, Yarlington Mill and Kingston Black). Cost of the 33 rootstock came to $210 delivered so we were thinking if we got more than 7 going, at $30 a tree from a nursery we would break even. We were very conservative in our thinking. Well it looks like 100% at this stage. The grafts were all done on the 25th of August. Yesterday I unwrapped the last one to find out why it hadn't taken and found a couple of nice leaves trying to work their way out. Now we just need to get them through summer and will plant them out next spring.

21.01.2022 We have had another productive week as we continue to frame up the roof structure of our winery/cidery. It has taken some time to complete all the jack rafters on the west side which are secured to the trusses and all have now been given a tapered end spanning 750cm to form the eave. We have also completed the jack rafters on the north side above the doorway and have put up battens and speed bracing over half the gable end. We have also given some of the jack rafters their... first coat of paint and finished off cladding the doorway in ply for added bracing. We have taken time out for our garden too as the grass is really moving now and mowing had to be done. Our veggie garden is looking much better and ready for some tomato plants. We have prepared a potato patch in new ground and there are flowers everywhere, attracting bees, butterflies and lots of birds. What a great time of year!

21.01.2022 Sorry for the lack of updates but we have been busy. We've had some decent rain and the everything is growing flat out. The apples are looking great and the vines are definitely in need of some attention. We are planning of having the framing inspection next week and our friendly plumber Craig is coming tomorrow to measure up so we can order the colourbond for the roof. It will be the same colour as the house and guest house (Jasper). We thought we would show some of the deta...il of the build as it this is where the effort has been in the last few weeks. We are still enjoying the winery build be we are keen to get back onto the house as there is a bit of work needed in the kitchen prior to our cupboards being installed prior to Christmas. We have added some rather detailed captions to the photos so feel free to ignore them ;-)

20.01.2022 All the trusses are up and the plywood bracing is almost complete. The pruning in the vineyard and tying down is done for the year and our grafts are starting to move. More photos on the vineyard and grafts to come. Thanks to Stephen and Deb who are visiting our 'bubble' for their help this week. Pack up time tomorrow and preparation for the Farmers' Market at Paynesville on Saturday.

20.01.2022 Just a quick update on the apple grafts that I did on the 25th of August 2020. Rootstock is MM106

20.01.2022 We congratulate Julie Hutchieson for winning the box of cider in our recent competition of guessing how many more bricks we needed to lay to complete our main house and guest house here at Cassilis Estate. Julie has now received the cider and they will be enjoyed by her daughter Dayna as a birthday gift. Nice!!

19.01.2022 It's been a busy time with apple harvests underway, Summer pruning to be done in the vineyard and working on our Winery. We have had some great rainfall over the last few weeks and the garden really appreciated a beautiful soak. We have started the first ferment for this year's cider and had a great crop of Gravenstein apples come in. We also had a great market at Paynesville Farmers' and Makers' Market on the weekend and appreciated the interest and support from visitors and locals alike.

17.01.2022 Day 1 of the Winery build. Happy with progress so far. This is the biggest wall and is on the west of the building. Thanks to our neighbour Phil for helping to stand it up. Deb was struggling a bit ;-)

16.01.2022 An early update for Day 5. Don't worry, we wont be doing one every day. Another wall built and up by lunch time. Starting to get the hang of it I reckon. Smaller walls also help. We have included some 'longer shots' of the build to give it a bit more context. We were quite worried with the height of it after standing up the first wall but it is starting to look OK now.

15.01.2022 It's been a busy time at our place! We have now laid our slab for our Winery/Cidery build and will be starting to frame it up in the next few weeks, when we can get our timber delivered. Our grape harvest was completed over the Easter weekend with some fabulous looking fruit from our Pinot Noir vines. We were really pleased to keep out the birds and see good fruit quality and a good crop despite some initial challenges early in the season. The grapes are currently fermenting... coming in at 24.2 brix. We have now picked the remainder of our apple harvest too with about 40 X 20 litre buckets of Pink Lady apples coming off 12 trees. Pretty pleased with that!

14.01.2022 As we continue to build our winery/cidery we still have plenty of jobs to do around the property. The fruit trees are looking great with lots of blossom on many of the apple trees and our vines are all pruned and tied down ready for bud burst. We have also tried our hand at grafting apples, pears, plums and peaches using a variety of techniques, such as tongue and whip, cleft, bark and bud grafting. Unfortunately our Chardonnay was growing well, but we had two severe frosts... last week, burning off much of the new growth. Hopefully they will recover and still produce good fruit for us. We have also been concerned about the amount of mistletoe that has developed on many of our larger gum trees around the edges of our property. We have been trying to cut out the mistletoe growths where we can reach them as they are often high up in the tree canopy.

14.01.2022 A big milestone for the winery build today! We have finished the wall framing. Today we added the second top plate all way around after straightening the walls. Then a job that we weren't looking forward to; getting the beams up that go up the centre of the winery. It actually went quite smoothly with no-one getting injured. (It would be very useful though if Deb was another 300mm taller). Very annoying to find that our 300mm x 45mm beam is actually 312mm x 45mm. Will need a little fnudging to make things fit. Tomorrow we need to get the centre post ready to stand up (and maybe even stand it up). Thanks for following the build.

13.01.2022 We have had a huge couple of weeks getting our winery building ready for inspection and then for roofing. Long days and lots of challenges along the way have all been worth getting the roof on which means we can start working on the walls! All is on track for using our new winery for this coming vintage.

13.01.2022 Well it's up! This is the job that had me worried. Standing up the post that supports the beam in the middle of the winery. It is 300mm diameter at the base and 3400mm long and it is a grey box (a very heavy timber).

12.01.2022 Day 4 on the winery build and we are at least half way there on the wall framing. The 3 walls that we have done are the highest at 3.3 metres to the top plate. The east wall is only 2.4 metres to the top of the rafters. A couple of hours spent this afternoon moving the timber for the rafters (300mmx45mm x 7 metres) and the centre beams (300mm x 45mm x 9.6 metres) to the completed side so that we can do the other walls. Enjoying the build and makes a change from what we were doing on the house.

12.01.2022 These are the rooms we need to complete bricking in our main house and guest house.

11.01.2022 Over the last two weeks we have continued to work on both builds (house and winery) and have also been busy with processing our apples for cider making. Some tr...ees have been really loaded with fruit and the recent rains have given them a much needed boost. We have also had to cover our grapes as the birds have been keen to feast. On the build front we have now finished the large sawcrete wall in the second guest bedroom and whilst this will be lime rendered, it gives us an idea of what it would look like as our cladding for te winery. We were also able to work out a system for pouring each section efficiently. It was great to have extra help with Colin and Julie coming up for a couple of weeks too. We have also finished the timber ceiling in the bedroom and are very pleased with how it looks. It really highlights the roof shape and had given us some interesting angles to work with. On the Winery build, we have now had the last course of cement blocks laid which will support the floor slab. We just need to finish core filling them.

11.01.2022 Another day another wall. Again, Phil from next door came to the rescue and gave us a hand to lift it up. One more wall where the door is on the north side and that will complete the high section of the build. After that the walls will be a lot more manageable. No walls tomorrow though as it is time to get some noggings in and straighten the walls up. Also will be doing the last of the grafting for the season. Pears are starting to move and the apples aren't far behind them.

10.01.2022 We use a crusher to gently crush the grapes and then they were left to rest for a few hours. We then put the grapes into the press and extracted the juice. We registered 23 brix which should make a lovely 2020 vintage.

09.01.2022 Well, we have a winner. Thank you for those who participated. The estimates ranged from 25 to 2500 which is pretty funny. And the winner is Julie Hutchieson wit...h an estimate of 753. This was posted on Rickey's timeline. Our estimate is 733 so to get within 20 is not a bad effort. We will be in touch Julie to arrange delivery. To put this number into some context, we can make 50 bricks an hour, so 3 five hour days will have it done!

06.01.2022 Well it has been another big week and we are calling it done!. All ten rafters are now in place and all the heavy lifting is over.

06.01.2022 Another day, another wall. Only one more to go but we've don't have enough timber. Will go down to Bairnsdale later in the week to get enough timber to finish the job. The next few days will be spent putting in noggins and fixing the top and bottom plates to every fourth stud using hoop iron. We will also prepare the centre pole for standing up. This supports the beams that run down the centre of the building.

05.01.2022 We have put our grapes through a cusher / destemmer machine, allowing us to fermet our wine on the skins to get good colour. The wine will ferment in the barrel until all the sugar has been converted to alcohol. It will then be racked off into oak barrels to settle and age.

04.01.2022 We have now finished the final wall including all the noggins. Glad to have it done and looking forward to getting some trusses and rafters up this coming week. Tomorrow, there are a couple of walls to straighten and a bit of checking to make sure where the trusses go is square. Then the second top plate will go on and I will start getting the pole ready to stand up.

04.01.2022 Over the last few weeks we have begun pruning in the vineyard and have purchased some dwarf apple root stock to graft some cider apples to increase our volume. We sourced the root stock MM106 from Tasmania and grafted Kingston Black, Somerset Red Streak and Yarlington Mill apple varieties. After a few years of growth these varieties appear to be able to manage our varied climate and are great cider apples. We look forward to making some cider from each variety in the future.... We also attended our first Farmers' Market since February at Paynesville today and appreciated the support our local community gave us and other producers. Congratulations to the Rotary Club of Mitchell River, Bairnsdale, for hosting such a great community event and for raising all our spirits!

03.01.2022 Framing inspection tomorrow, roofing iron being delivered Wednesday and the roof going on Wednesday arvo or Thursday morning. I'm feeling a little nervous and a little excited ;-) Rain this morning means we have a big day tomorrow getting all the eave lining in place.

03.01.2022 You may find this interesting. This is located in our neighbours place right on the boundary of our property and the neighbours. Our property was owned by Thomas Roberts, a butcher, who was tragically killed in 1917 by local blacksmith after an altercation at the Cassilis Coffee Palace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jixj9OF2Ujg&t=5s

03.01.2022 We have all but finished the apple harvest for the year with only the Pink Lady apples left on the trees for a few more weeks. Our cider is fermenting well and we were really pleased with the volume of apples we picked from our Kingston Black trees. They came in at 20 brix, which would give us an alcohol content of 11% but as we blend with other varieties this will come down somewhat. We hope to have sufficient volume to do cider specific to the apple varieties next year. We... have also harvested our white grapes, Chardonnay, Traminer and some Pinot Gris with only getting about 50% of our crop after the birds had hit us hard. The quality is good with no smoke taint which is a relief with maturation occurring after the bushfires. We have now double netted the last of the grapes hoping to keep the birds out until we can harvest as our Pinot Noir grapes are looking great. On the winery build, we are progressing slowly with preparations for the slab. Our steel was delivered on Friday and we hope to have it poured within the week.