I received this definitive photo from Stephanie Toole at Mount Horrocks taken this week in the Cordon Cut Vineyard with the message “Pray we don’t get any frosts!”, illustrating how vignerons are at the constant mercy of the weather and like any agriculture, there are crucial, nail biting moments or stages throughout the year than determine success or failure that they have absolutely no control over. Commercial madness really, but your sort of need to be a bit ‘mad’ to be in the wine growing business, and you have to be downright crazy to do what Toole does, growing riesling for a late harvest wine by means of ‘Cordon Cut’ with the grapes hanging there for weeks at the mercy of the weather.

I have written on Toole’s impossibly elaborate obsession of this nectar, a wine that is profoundly unique and deservedly Trademarked, although I see imposters popping up all the time, but be assured there is only one Cordon Cut in the world and you must in your lifetime, try it – several times – perhaps with figs http://www.thewanderingpalate.com/produce/turkish-figs-in-season/

One of biggest fans of Cordon Cut is Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, it being a personal favourite of hers, needless to say endorsement does not coming higher than this http://www.thewanderingpalate.com/profiled-wineries/fit-for-a-queen/

Further mandatory reading on Mount Horrocks, Must-Have Wine – Mount Horrocks Semillon – Watervale, Clare Valley, South Australia, 10-Year Vert5cal 2010 to 2001 – One of the World’s Great White Wine Bargains http://www.thewanderingpalate.com/?p=7048

Budburst in Mount Horrocks Cordon Cut Vineyard www.mounthorrocks.com

What a difference a bud makes - A Cordon before the Cut