OCTOBER 2021

Covid lockdowns are nearly over. Budburst is here on 5th October and we are slashing the grass between the rows. The ground is saturated, the vines are pruned, mostly cane pruned with about 10 percent spur pruned. We shall spray out biodynamic products during the moon descending after 13th October. Lots of compost already in place.

JUNE2020

Great News! Our new website is at http://www.bellbrookfriends.com where you will find all our wines and lots of photographs of our winery and vineyard. More news can be found on another page of this blog—-latest news….

Our wines can be found in Bathurst bottle shops, Cobb and Co Cellars, Knickerbocker Cellars and Bernardis/ IGA, also in Oberon IGA. In Sydney through Bellagio Cafe, cnr Albion St and Bronte Rd. You are welcome to order directly from the winery via winemaker@bellbrookfriends.com

Please look up Bellbrook News for our latest activities. At the time of this edit we have our 2018 vintage  in barrel and tank and it is coming along beautifully. We have nearly finished our 2018 winter prune.

Welcome to the 2017/2018 season. Starting slowly, cool and dry. Our 2016 wines are selling well and nearly out of the huge 2015 Pinot Noir. See our facebook and News page on this blog.

Sept 2017, Biodynamic brew including horn manure, manure concentrate, fermented Equisetum, seaweed concentrate and molasses. Stirred for 1 hour to absorb cosmic energy and sprayed out when the moon and saturn are in opposition

Please click on Bellbrook News for latest pics and report on recent harvest

SEE <JULY2017FRIENDSLIST> for prices as at July 2017

OUR 2016 VINTAGE IS VERY PROMISING AND NOW IN THE BOTTLE…

New year 2016, the vines are looking the best ever. look at the Chardonnay pics attached…

Spring 2015. we have had a great start to this years crop. No frost since budburst at the end of October and the new regime of hard pruning seems to suit our 12 year old vines. I have put up a new post called “Crossing the Divide” which has a collection of my poetry up to 2014…
Winter 2015. The wine is gently maturing in tanks and barrels and pruning will start soon. We have been pouring wine at Crago Mill in Bathurst as well as the Royal Bathurst Show. We recently celebrated 200 years since Governor Macquarie’s visit to Bathurst in 1815 with a new flag raising on the banks of the river and a night market with food and wine on sat 9th May. We had queues waiting to buy glasses of our wine and other regional vignerons to celebrate the illumination of the city.

Pictures below at 4pm prior to the crowds

Summer 2015, The crop is coming along. Hopefully friends will line up for the Harvest after Easter.

Please look at the Bellbrook News Page for the results of the National Cool Climate Wine Show. The judges liked our 2013 wines at the public tasting see picture below.

George Clark, emerging poet and winemaker.

See also http://www.bellbrookfriendswinery.blogspot.com.au

Producing hand made single vineyard wines in the central ranges of NSW. Altitude 950m. Moving to biodynamic practices, all work carried out by family and Bellbrook Friends.

Sophonisba dreaming of Bellbrook Friends

Oberonmap (click for image)

Bellbrook Friends Winery License No LIQW880014522
email: georgeclark15@hotmail.com
Winetasting and visits by appointment ,P O Box 57 Oberon NSW 2787 Australia.

George with Jasmine and Blaze

O for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention….will shakespeare

Many a ricketty old son of a gun, on the tides of the future tossed
will tell of battles that were really won, that history says were lost….henry lawson

A Moment In Time                                                                                        

The old  kooradgi of the Gundungarra

watched the determined pale men

cutting a swathe through the country

unchanged since the serpent and the quoll

stopped fighting in the Burragorang.

The language of science and conquest

brought the shadow of the English king.

Scarlet and blanco strapped soldiers

walked on cliffs  above layers of time,

Triassic floods, carbon swamps,

stone lifted and carved by the weather.

The country of his mind was being written

with  the surveyors brass eye, bringing

latitude and longitude, heading west,

explorers, soldiers and convicts clearing

away the voice and spirit of the land.

For rum, emancipation and tickets of leave

the road builders dug and blasted their way

through the sighing of trees, the voices

of birds, the trickle of water holes

and the fear and sadness of people.

A moment in time the earth tilted forever.

 

The sentry staring through the firelight

musket in hand, whistle in  mouth

the liturgy in his pocket with his

commission meaning little here.

No walls, no fences, endless country,

dingo howl swallowed by the stars

brittle gums dropping branches

smoke from unseen fires.

Plenty of space it was said,

as if it was all the same like air.

Missing the point about belonging

to the place that nurtured, totem

animals, the murmuring of streams,

sunlight and shade, the shelter of caves

the sky turning overhead.

But land was given away, inns built,

and once the women came, somehow

he knew, these unforgiving pioneers

and their children were going to stay.