Last month, I went up to Printhie as part of my Wine Fair project. Printhie is producer of premium wines and the only winery in the Orange region to be given 5 stars by James Halliday in the 2009 Wine Compendium. After visiting the winery and being shown around the vineyard by David Swift, I have little doubt on the authenticity of JH's statement that "the wines are modestly priced and will gain further weight as the vines age. Printhie can fairly claim to be the premier winery in the Orange region." Printhie is a family-owned winery located in the region of Orange, NSW. The winery started in the mid 1990s but expanded rapidly from early 2000's onwards when sons of owner, Ed and David Swift joined the family business. Together with the very talented and experienced winemaker, Drew Tuckwell, who is one of the very few and fortunate to have attended the famous Len Evans Tutorial last year, they make some really fantastic wines at startling affordable prices. I don't know how they cover the cost of their production at such great value and quality but whatever it is they do, I look forward to their wines.
The name Printhie is an aboriginal name that is derived from a now extinct lizard. According to Dave, the lizard is being displayed at a museum in Alice Springs. The symbol of the bird on their winery's logo, the bird which is called a Swift, comes from their family name. I think that the simplicity of the design of the logo is eye-catching and ingenious. A bird is a really fantastic way to represent not only the family's name, but the height in which the grapes of Orange are being grown on. Most of the grapes are grown on a mountain that goes up to 1400m called Mount Canobolas, a now defunct volcano. Indeed, the winery produces wines with attitude and altitude. Ironically, other produces are being grown in Orange except oranges.
It all starts in the Vineyard
The tour of the family-owned winery started with walking the Printhie vineyard while Dave explained to me about the Orange region. Printhie owns two vineyards, the Printhie vineyard which is located next to the cellar door and the Phalaris vineyard which is within the Orange region. The other grapes are being sourced from other grape growers. To be considered as part of the Orange GI, the grapes have to be grown above 600m around the Orange vicinity. The soil at the Printhie vineyard is rich volcanic soil and deep red clay overlying limestone. Along with the weather, this produces elegant wines with an average alcohol of 13%. What I love about the wines of Orange is that the alcohol is not so high that it creates the unpleasant burning sensation in your mouth. It also produces wines that are more versatile with food as the alcohol does not overwhelm the taste of the food and softer on the palate.
The weather in orange is cool; the coolest out of all the wine producing regions in NSW with an average temperature of 19 degree Celsius. Being cool climate, the vineyards on the mountain can suffer from frost. The soil, being clay, has natural water retention. This can be a problem in wet years as too much water causes the vines to produce diluted grapes instead of concentrated ones that produce more intense flavours. However, Orange has been blessed with many good vintages such that there are no or not much rains after winter. Drought in Orange produces better wines in the region and the last wet year according to Dave was 2002. The vines are grown on slopes and this provides better drainage. In the Printhie vineyards, the vineyard has a North-west and north-east aspect. This allows the vines to get sufficient sunlight to ripen.
Walking the Ground
The Printhie vineyard is about 25 acres and it is planted with Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon two small blocks of Viognier and Pinot Gris. Printhie makes a gris style as opposed to a grigio style as they believe that a lower altitude gives the Pinot Gris wines better texture and complexity (Read more about how they make their Pinot Gris and my tasting notes below). As Dave was telling me more about the vineyard, it occurred to me that Printhie has thought through very carefully how and where their vines are planted. The Shiraz is planted on the west of the vineyard, then the Cabernet and lastly the whites on the eastern side of the block. The reason for that is that the winds that flow through the west are usually hot. When the west wind hits the vineyard, it hits the Shiraz vines first, which need more heat to ripen, and then diffuses through the canopy by the time it reaches the white wine vines. Since the white wine vines do not get the brunt of the heat, it doesn't get "overcooked". The white wine vines are managed in such a way that it grows on the east of the trellis wire and is shaded by the canopy on the other side of the wire. This is to shade the grapes from the afternoon sun as the sun rises from the east to the west and keeps the PG grapes fresh.
The Shiraz vines are cane pruned and the rest of the varietals are spur pruned. In Orange, the temperatures rarely go over 35 degrees Celsius and when it reaches that temperature, the vines usually shut down. As this hardly happens, there are a lot of growing days and Shiraz, being a vigorous varietal, is cane pruned so as to reduce the bud numbers on the vine, thus, reducing vigour. The Shiraz vines are usually pruned to 11 buds and gives up a yield of 7 tons/hectare. Printhie concentrates on keeping the vines low yielding as it wants to produce quality grapes rather than obtain quantity. The Cabernet vines are spur pruned with vertical shoot position (VSP). That means the canes are straight and upright. See picture below. 
The Cabernet is usually pruned to 40 buds per vine and each bud would produce two bunches of grapes. As a rough calculation, that would be about 4 bottles per vine. The vines are pruned once a year at the beginning of June and it takes three months to prune all the vines.
Printhie takes very good care of their vines by checking constantly to see if the vines are getting sufficient water. The winery uses irrigation and would sample the soil and the grapes before considering to water the vines. As mentioned, too much water dilutes the grapes and too little, the vines dry out and die. Dave tells me that they would usually look at the Shiraz vines as it is the first to show signs of water stress. When the vines are stressed, the Shiraz vine will cause the tendrils to die off. Ground moisture probes would be used to measure the tension of the soil to see how wet it is before a decision is made.
All the grapes are machine harvested. Printhie uses its own machines to do it and the process takes 1-2 hours. They usually harvest the whites at night as it is easier to start a cool ferment at lower temperatures. A cool ferment for white grapes is usually from 15 – 16 degrees so as to give their white wines a fruity freshness. The reds are usually picked in the day as compared to the night. If the reds are picked in the night, it may be too cold to start a ferment. Printhie usually ferments its wines at 22 degrees Celsius.
In the Production House
The reason Printhie's wines are so fantastically good at bargain prices is their approach to winemaking. They would start by identifying the best parcels of grapes and use them for their premium label called Swift Family Heritage (SFH). They would make limited cases of the SFH. Whatever is left behind from the SFH will be used for their next premium range, which is the Mount Canobolas Collection (MCC) along with other grapes which has been specially selected for the MCC range. Then, whatever wines that are still left behind from the SFH and any remainder from the MCC will be used in their entry level wines which are the Mountain Range.
All the grapes, like any winery after it has been harvested, goes into the receiver bin, then the crusher and then the press. Printhie uses a Central Membrane Press instead of a common pneumatic/air bag press. As opposed to other presses, the press has a bag that runs through the middle of the press, blows outwards 360 degrees to press the grapes instead of a bag that lines all the grapes to one side and presses the grape on one side of the bag. Using the Central Membrane Press, you get a softer press as it does not extract as many of the bitter phenolics from the skins, stalks and seeds into the free run juice.
All the juice for whites and reds goes into stainless steel ferment. Printhie usually uses French oak for its Cabernets and Chardonnays and French for its Merlot and Shiraz. For its premium reds, they usually use medium toast.
The lovely thing about Orange is that even at high altitudes, the grapes have flavor ripeness and 15-20g/l of natural acidity in the berries. For warm climates, the wines usually need acid adjustments but there are no additions in the Printhie wines except for the reds which still need a little adjustment depending on the vintage.
When talking about vintages in Orange, Dave said that the 2008 vintage was the best Orange ever had as it was dry to start with and there was good rain in Christmas and January. After that, it was a dry period all the way to harvest and that is ideal for grape growing especially for soils with good water retention.
Here is an interesting method which Printhie uses to make its wines. All the pre-fermented grape juice that comes into the winery are fined before starting fermentation. Egg whites, gelatin or milk are added to the juice to balance the juice out and take out the coarseness, phenolics or greenness so as to create a lovely structure as juice. A lot of wine makers like to fine the wines are fermentation but Printhie's philosophy is that the more you can do to the juice before ferment, the less you have to adjust the wine. It is something like having the best ingredients first before you cook the dish. Before bottling, there is little need to fine the wine as it has been done earlier although there may still be a little tweaking that is needed for example, if there is a little bit of coarseness at the end, they will tweak the wine mildly before bottling. Using this method of preparing the juice before ferment, the juice would come into the winery and remain as juice for sometimes up to 10 days in stainless steel vats the keep the juice chilled. The pre-fermented juice will be sulphured and remain chilled at 3 degree Celsius to settle the juice. The juice will then be raised up to 10 degrees for fining and inoculated with yeast. The temperature will then be warmed back up to 15 degrees and maintained there until the juice is about to be fermented. When the juice is about to be fully fermented, Printhie will let the temperature run up to complete the fermentation. This is because the sugar content would have been so low that the yeast has less to convert and will take a longer to finish the ferment. Raising the temperature encourages the yeast to stay active and continue fermenting. This gives the people at Printhie enough time to assess the juice and figure out what they have to do to make it right before ferment.
Printhie started using this method of preparing the juice before ferment when Winemaker Drew Tuckwell came aboard the Printhie team 18 months ago. The philosophy of Winemaker Drew is that the less you have to adapt and change the play with the wine or modify it after ferment, the better it will be. I believe that many winemakers would agree with that philosophy as well. Printhie found that the wines ended up more elegant in the finished product and more seamless in the finish as the elements of the wine are integrated into the ferment.
The Chardonnay and the Pinot Gris are both crafted by blending different components to form the final product. Both wines would go through the fining process before ferment but separated into different components and treated differently.
Dave says that the Chardonnay is created with different components so as to keep freshness and build underlying complexity to the final wine. The chardonnay grapes are sourced from 900m and are picked early to keep the lovely acidity. Some of the components would undergo wild ferment, some tank fermented, some barrel fermented, some components creamier than the other; this allows them to have the luxury of blending. Instead of treating the whole batch in the same way, Printhie would do multiple batches. The same is done for its other wines except for its Rieslings which are done as a whole batch.
As for the Pinot Gris, they want to create a style which has more texture, weight and complexity unlike the grigio style, which is all about freshness and acidity like a crunchy, granny smith apple. What Printhie does is to have a component of PG that is wild fermented so that it adds complexity to the wine. Some of the wine is stored in French barrels in a reductive environment. The PG in the barrels undergo some natural micro oxygenation in the barrels and it is being developed in the barrel with its lees just like what the winemakers in Alsace do with their wines. This gives the PG a creamy texture and this component will be blended with a separate component that has not gone through any malolactic or barrel aging. To do a gris style, Dave says that more needs to be done in the winery as they want to create a gris style which has texture, weight, freshness and lovely length, with flavours of baked apple and spiciness instead of crunchy apples. By using a component of wild ferment, the mouthfeel of the final product will be more unique.
All the Chardonnays are wild fermented and this year, the Pinot Noir is wild fermented too. The rest the grapes are fermented with commercial yeast. Its Sauvignon Blanc (SB) are sourced from vineyards at a height of 1040 m and gives off lifted scents of passion fruit. I was very impressed by the 2009 SB, which is still in the fermentation tank and about to complete its fermentation. It had such intense aromas of passion fruit and tropical fruits. What caught my attention was the length of the wine and it had a finish that went on and on. According to Dave, Orange makes exceptional SBs and I believe him when he says that cause their entire 2008 SBs are sold out even at the cellar door. If anyone wishes to buy any wines from Printhie, keep a look out for their 2009 SBs. Its Rieslings do pretty well in the cool climate and gives aromas of lemon, lime blossoms and mineral lifts instead of petrol or kerosene.
In general, Pinot Gris is pretty good too but it doesn't have the same palate structure as Chardonnays you can find in Orange. However, PG is an entirely different profile from Chardonnays. Shiraz at lower altitudes don't show much spicy pepper but reveals a lot of heavier dark berry and chocolate notes. Dave tells me that at the moment, the Orange region doesn't have a benchmark Merlot. As for Cabernet Sauvignon at higher altitudes, it needs an exceptional year to produce the minty and eucalyptus flavours. The Chardonnays in Orange are grown from a height of 600 to 1100m and the profile of Chardonnay changes as it goes higher from a melony, board and developed fruit profile to a more citrusy, lifted fruit style with higher acid and elegance.
End of Tour
The tour ended with a visit to the cellar door and enjoying the wines that the Printhie team has created. What a wonderful trip this has been. My gratitude to David and the Printhie team for being so accomodating to us by letting us view their winery processes. A big thank you to David for taking time off his busy schedule to show us and explaining every detail to us. Cheers!
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