The Interactive Urban Winery Where You Can Stomp the Grapes
Noisy Ritual is set to give us a hands- and feet-on role in every step of the winemaking process.
In European rural communities, wine-making has been an inclusive experience for centuries. What better way to forge village connections than by the mass squashing of grapes and shared sampling of the results? Here in Australia, however, exorbitant distances mean that our quaffing usually happens a long way from the bottle’s source. Even if you are curious about setting up your own winery, it all looks rather pricey and tricky from the outside.
Three guys in Melbourne want to change all that. They’re set on opening the city’s first interactive ‘urban winery’. And, through their Pozible campaign, they’re hoping to enlist your help. At Noisy Ritual, you’ll be able to take a hands- and feet-on role in the creation of people-powered, group-owned, premium quality wine, using old-school strategies — from the messy luxury of the mid-March stomp, to the squidgy fun of early-April pressing, to the spring magic of bottling — without leaving the Melbourne met area.
The project came about when winemaker Alexander Byrne (of Lethbridge Wines) discovered a fermentation tank beneath the Thornbury house of schoolmate, Cam Nicol. “We decided then and there that we’d have to make use of it, because it was the only logical thing to do,” Cam says. “So, in autumn this year, Alex brought two half-tonne batches of shiraz grapes up from Geelong, from where he works. A few friends put in money to buy them, and we formed a basic winemaking syndicate. When it came to labour time, we’d have mini-parties, doing our stomping or pressing downstairs then coming upstairs, to eat and socialise.”
Before that, Cam, a "music industry multi-tasker", was new to winemaking. “The process was a massively educational one for me,” he says. “I’d never known much about wine, so being involved in the making of it was a doorway into wine culture. It was something I’d always felt intimidated about and found it hard to converse about, because there’s a lot of assumed knowledge when you’re talking to people who actually know about wine.”
Nervous whenever you sidle up to a wine-tasting counter? Not sure about deciphering the difference between a leather tone and a blackberry one? Noisy Ritual intends to have you demystified in a matter of months.
Figuring that other people might benefit from the same learning curve, Cam suggested to Alex and another winemaking school buddy, Sam Vogel (Provenance Wines), that they take their neighbourhood operations citywide. Once funding is secured for Noisy Ritual, they’re planning on moving from Cam’s place to a bigger space, somewhere near Brunswick. In 2015, members (join up by pledging) will be able to take an active part in winemaking, in a party atmosphere fuelled by live music, DJs, wine tastings and food. To stem your loneliness in the lapses between the action, there’ll be special events and ample opportunities to drop in, to "taste the wine straight from the barrel, take some measurements, bend a winemaker’s ear or just give a barrel a hug".
Images by Tajette O'Halloran.
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