2021 has been a bumper harvest in South Australia, especially for Mollydooker. Holly Marquis, daughter of Mollydooker owner Sarah, has given us this update on the 2021 vintage so far, lees-fights and all!
I’m sure many of you have heard about the pristine growing conditions we had in South Australia, which has produced an abundance of exceptional fruit. After a few years of smaller yields and sold-out wines, we had just started to worry that we wouldn’t have enough wine to drink (talk about tragic!). But, as has always been the case with our magical Mollydooker story, just when we needed it, we were provided with our second biggest vintage… ever! This year saw us bring in a whopping 1388 tonnes of premium quality fruit. With all hands on deck, an incredible team of 30 vintage casuals joined the team in the cellar to help process the fruit over the last two months.
With less COVID restrictions in place this year, the experience of working vintage in the cellar has been entirely different. Whilst last year was spent with such clean hands that no one would have known what we did for work, this year got a slight bit dirtier… With about one week left, Luke told me a tale about the antics that used to take place on the vintage casuals last day – the annual ‘lees’ fight. For those that don’t know what lees are, they’re the solids left over after we separate the wine, resembling something that looks like thick chocolate mud cake batter, but purple. After hearing these stories, myself and some accomplices took it upon ourselves to revive this tradition and well… you can all imagine the events that followed!