The story of The Four Tonne Project made up of Collector Wines, Eden Road Wines and Four Winds Vineyard.
Flicking through Facebook notifications the other night, a friend’s post caught my eye – questions about my love of wine and my ability to help support refugees. What an interesting combination.
A couple of clicks later and what emerged was a story about Sarah, grapes galore, neighbours joining forces and a project oozing community goodness. And right on our city’s doorstep.
I had to know more.
So last Thursday I met with Sarah Collingwood over coffee at Tilley’s and plied her with questions.
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Who is Sarah?
I was born and raised in Canberra, moved away for many years but found the gravitational pull of Canberra and her surrounds too strong. Now I’m a mother of two, living in Murrumbateman with my husband John and I’m the business manager of Four Winds Vineyard.
What’s your story?
Five years ago, when John and I moved back to the region, John traded in his stethoscope for secateurs, studied viticulture and we took over the management of the Four Winds Vineyard from my parents. My folks planted the vineyard 17 years ago. My sister, Jaime, originally studied forensic biology and then switched to wine making in the Napa Valley in California. She met Bill there and brought him back to Australia – the duo are our vineyard’s winemakers.
This year we had a particularly good season – a confluence of good weather, no disease, no rain and a fruit crop fat with stored carbohydrates. We picked all the fruit we needed and fulfilled all our contracts but we still had four tonnes of really nice fruit on the vines. I was just mortified at the thought of leaving it for the birds. We couldn’t fit another berry into our winery, every container was full so I had a chat with a couple of neighbours (and great mates) – Alex McKay from Collector Wines and Hamish Young and Nick Spencer from Eden Road Wines. Between the three wine companies we figured Four Winds could pick and provide the grapes, Alex could make the wine and then Eden Road could bottle all the wine for us.
And so The Four Tonne Project was born.
We wanted to give the proceeds from the grapes to a local charity. It was important to all of us that the money stayed local. Refugees are a daily news item now, really topical, so it inspired me to explore what Canberra charities there might be who are focused on asylum seekers and refugees. I found Companion House and I offered to donate the sales from the four tonnes of surplus Shiraz. To date, we’ve donated $25,000.
Why Companion House?
For me, I hadn’t really realised that we have refugees and asylum seekers living in our community and I thought it was a good chance for us to help these individuals living in Canberra.
I learnt that Companion House have lost a lot of their government funding, so it was even more important to me to help make up for some of that loss. I visited Kathy Ragless- director of the organisation – a couple of weeks ago to see how the money is being used. It’s amazing. The $25,000 we have already sent their way has been used to cover emergency food stores (rice, cereals etc…), Canberra bus tickets to get individuals to job interviews, white card construction training and stores of medicines.
The Four Tonne Project – is this a first?
Yes. We don’t usually have ‘spare grapes’ in our vocabulary. The stars really aligned for us this year. Actually, for the first time in 17 years!
Alex had spare capacity at his winery and Eden Roads were happy to help out as well. It’s incredibly unusual that all these things could (and have) come together.
So if the stars aligned once more, would you do it again?
Why not. If everything does align, it’s been fun and rewarding – so yes.
This project has put us in contact with such lovely people who are genuinely grateful for what we are doing and the messages we receive are so positive. Canberrans are really supportive – they have been investing in the charity Shiraz since early March knowing they won’t be able to drink their drops until November-ish. This project has generated great things.
So what stage is the project at?
We figured early on that we’d have about 250 cases of Shiraz for sale. The wine for this project is actually called ‘The 4 Tonne Project, 2015 Shiraz’.
We’ve already sold 150 cases, so we’re just over half way. Nearly all of the proceeds from purchasing a dozen bottles will go to Companion House. The tiny bit we keep is to pay for bottles, caps, labels, postage…etc.
So there’s still time and wine left for purchase.
We’ll bottle in October/November and with no room to store, the wine will be posted out (or picked up, should folk wish) fairly quickly after that.
Is the wine any good?
The wine is good – yep (she laughs). I’m not a winemaker, so the nice thing for me is that I know we have a stellar team making our charity wine. Alex has been nominated for winemaker of the year and Eden Road has won the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy – the most prestigious and sought after wine award in Australia.
In fact, here’s a sneak peek at some of the tasting notes. These will make you salivate before you even sip…
“The nose has notes of violet, ripe strawberry, raspberry as well as darker plum aromas, woven with clove, cinnamon, black pepper and other spices. Moreish drinkability, gentle sweet tannins and spice. It will also reward patient cellaring”.
Lastly, and completely non-wine related…where’s your favourite place in Canberra?
Black Mountain.
Walking up the mountain is one of my favourite things. I have a special backpack so that I can take my little nine-month old with me. She sleeps in the back while I charge on and enjoy the scenery.
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