Treasury Wines Estates winery, Baileys of Glenrowan, will be certified organic as of the 2015 vintage, which is being made under Australian Certified Organic principles.
The move follows the release of the 2012 Baileys Organic Shiraz, and according to the winery, its commitment to organics is a tribute to the traditional techniques used when the winery was first established.
Winemaker Paul Dahlenburg says Baileys’ founder Richard Bailey used a similar minimal intervention approach to winemaking in the 1870s when pioneering Glenrowan as a winemaking region.
“These days we take the best of old-world winemaking practices and combine them with modern winemaking techniques guided by organic principles to produce our wines at Baileys,” says Dahlenburg.
“It has been many years in the making to become fully certified organic – first the Baileys of Glenrowan Vineyard became fully certified in 2011, then in vintage 2012 we produced our first fully certified organic wine: our Organic Shiraz.
“We’ve now taken the final step of becoming fully certified organic, both in the vineyard and in the winery for all our estate-sourced wines, including our old vine shiraz,” he says.
In order to gain organic certification, the winery must follow a number of regulations including only using organically approved products; maintaining a cleaning register; keeping ferments healthy and robust so that fermentation occurs in a clean and pure manner which minimises sulphide production; and passing annual audits both at the winery and in the vineyard.
The 2013 vintage of the Baileys Organic Shiraz has just been released and is available in leading retailers and at the Cellar Door at RRP $27.99.
