Christmas is fast approaching and what better time is there for having Mistletoe on hand to help you, your family and your friends, celebrate the Festive Season.

Place your orders now!

Below are a few suggestions of Mistletoe wine/food matching options you may like to consider:

• Petillant (Sparkling Rosé) and/or Mozcato – serve well chilled as a perfect Summer aperitifs.
  
• Cold crisp Semillon with seafood lunches,
  
• Chilled Rosé as an aperitif at any time of the day,
  
• Shiraz,or the Barrel Fermented Rosé, at night, with Roast Turkey and the trimmings,
  
• Mozcato or the Botrytis Semillon,with cold fresh fruits and cheeses,
  
• Mistela with Christmas puddings or cakes.

If you are like most of us and haven’t finalized your Christmas gifts why not ease the pain and avoid the rush in the shops and order some Mistletoe wines. No lugging heavy packages or enduring the Christmas crowds and the attendant rush and bustle.

Delivered direct to the door, Mistletoe is certain to please the special people in your life.
Why not reward your loyal staff, customers or suppliers with some great Mistletoe wines for Christmas? Quality wine is a gift that is always appreciated.

Mistletoe has produced some colourful Festive wine bottle neck tags to assist you with your Christmas gifts. When placing your order let us know how many tags you require and we shall include these at no cost. Write your personal greeting on the card and place on the neck of the bottle. What could be simpler? Keep some on hand for those last minute little gifts for neighbours or people who drop in unexpectedly.

Please remember, in the current economic environment we should all be endeavouring to buy Australian Made whenever we can. When you purchase wine from Mistletoe you are supporting a 100% Australian owned business that is located in a rural community.

There is a lot of romance and mystique that surrounds the wine industry but at the end of the day our industry is agricultural based. The dollars you spend go to our loyal grape growers and flow into our regional economy through vineyard workers, grape pickers, agricultural suppliers, truck drivers, people who work on the bottling lines and in packaging,agricultural supplies etc.

Australian wine is one of the very few commodities that is produced 100% in Australia.The dollars you spend on Australian (Mistletoe) wine stay in Australia helping to secure the futures of many including our children and grandchildren!

As a result of James Halliday rating Mistletoe as a 5 star wine producer, third year running, and many other awards and accolades, we have been extremely busy and are expecting our biggest Christmas yet. To ensure we get your orders delivered on time please assist us by ordering as early as possible!

Thank you!

Ken and Gwen Sloan

We cannot believe how fast the last 12 months has gone. It has literally flown! It has been an extremely busy and exciting time for all of us at Mistletoe.

We have had some lows – losing all our Hunter red grapes because of the heavy rain we experienced in late January and early February, but in virtually every other respect it has been a year of highs.

First, Lorenzo the Italian winemaker we brought to Australia to spend vintage at Mistletoe. Lorenzo now calls Australia home, wants to stay here permanently and will be applying to become an Australian citizen.

He is working with our very good friend John Cassegrain, in Port Macquarie, where he has just been appointed head winemaker.

Lorenzo has brought his girlfriend (Cuquita, a viticulturalist) out from the United States and we think wedding bells may not be all that far away. We welcome them both to Australia’s winemaking community and wish them every success.

The unfortunate bout of vintage rain we had in the Hunter led us to purchase extra grapes from the Hilltops ( Young) Region of NSW where we have been sourcing fruit for the past few years.

Hilltops has had what the locals describe as “the best vintage for twenty years” and seeing the reds in the barrels we can endorse that perception wholeheartedly.

In the early part of 2009 we shall be releasing a Shiraz-Viognier, a Cabernet-Merlot and a barrel fermented Viognier, all made from Hilltops grapes. You will not be disappointed with these wines… They are crackerjack!

It will be a real pleasure to see them wearing Mistletoe labels.

Congratulations to our winemaker Nick and his wife Danielle who welcomed their new little baby girl, Sasha, to this world on October 18th. Sasha is their first child, so both of them, especially Nick, are on a totally new learning curve and learning to do without sleep – just like vintage!

Luckily we have the fantastic 2008 Hilltops reds to put away for Sasha’s birth year.

All of us at Mistletoe wish you, and your loved ones, a happy, safe and joyous Festive Season followed by a successful 2009.

Thank you all for your ongoing support. It is sincerely appreciated.

Merry Christmas from Ken, Gwen, Robert, Cassandra, Julie, Nick, Kristy, Roger, Margaret and Linda.

The Hunter Valley is on a high!

After the rainfall of the past 18 months everything is green and vibrant and the valley looks fantastic; as good as we have ever seen it!

The vineyards have all kicked away with excellent Spring growth with rain seeming to arrive just as it is needed.

At Mistletoe,as part of our constant search for quality we pruned the vineyard back extremely hard this Winter to ensure we harvest the best quality fruit we can.

The vines have responded magnificently and are covered in the new Spring growth.

Our pre-vintage maintenance of the vineyards is at its peak at the moment with the vines having flowered, the fruit having set and its journey to vintage underway.

It has been a cool start to Spring with only two reasonably hot days so far and lovely cool nights with relatively low humidity.

It is amazing how the gardens have been transformed with the rain we have had over the past 18 months. Trees that have grown very little over the last 5 years have doubled in size in that 18 month period and are providing lovely shade to the Cellar door building and our home.

As we move into December we commence our major pre-vintage overhaul of the winery and all the machinery in preparation for harvest.

We believe vintage will not commence until February 2009 due to the cool Spring and consequent late budburst of the vines.

This is much later than the last 4 or 5 years and is tending back to the dates that used to be regarded as the normal start of vintage.

At this time all looks very good but we won’t rest until all the grapes are safely in the winery.

An exciting time of year!

At Mistletoe we are constantly working to improve the quality of all the wines we produce.

We use wine shows as a litmus test of where our wines sit, quality wise, in relation to those of our peers, both in the Hunter and Australia wide.

Win! Win! Win! This past 6 months has been a most amazing and rewarding time for us as we have achieved the best Wine Show results ever.

As a result of those successes we have had countless articles and reviews written about our wines in publications such as Gourmet Wine Traveller, The Newcastle Herald, The Melbourne Age, The Illawarra Mercury, The Canberra Times, Winewise, Winestate, Jeremy Oliver, James Halliday, Sunday Life, ABC Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald in the Good Living section with numerous mentions by Huon Hooke.

The highlights for the year have been,

• being declared the Best Exhibitor at Winewise Small Vignerons Awards 2008,
  
• having two of our wines included in the Top 40 wines of NSW in 2008,
  
• winning the trophy for the Best Chardonnay in NSW in 2008 at the NSW Wine Awards
  
• receiving a trophy for our very first Verdelho at the RASQ Show Wine 2008.

In addition we have received the following awards for our Reserve Chardonnays.

• 2005 – Trophy for the Best Chardonnay of Show – Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show 2008.
  
• Trophies for the 2007 and 2005 Reserve Chardonnays at the same show.
  
• Gold medals for the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Reserve Chardonnays at the St George Hunter Valley Wine Show 2008.
  
• 2006 Reserve Chardonnay – Trophy Best Dry white Wine NSW Small Winemakers Show.
  
• Top Gold Chardonnay – Reserve Chardonnay 2007 – Australian Small Winemakers Show 2008.

Summing up, Mistletoe has won 9 Trophies, 16 Gold Medals and in excess of 30 Silver and Bronze medals in the past 6 months.

The focus has been on our Chardonnays, however, we have won Gold medals for our Semillon and Shiraz as well,with our New Release Shiraz 2006 being nominated as the Equal Best in Category in the Hunter Tasting 2008 by Winestate Magazine with a 4.5 star rating. Also rated at 94 points by James Halliday in the newly released Australian Wine Companion.

The 2007 Reserve Chardonnay was also rated by Winestate as a 5 star wine and is included in the Best of the Hunter, Best in NSW and is in the running for Champion Australian Wine of the year – 2008 – to be announced in January.

For a very small winery with limited resources these results are very humbling.

Don’t forget, these award winning wines are the same wines we sell to you, our valued customers, at realistic prices.

As James Halliday said in his Australian Wine Companion 2009…

“The quality and consistency of these (Mistletoe) wines is above reproach, as is their price”

Because of the excessive rain during the 2008 vintage we lost all of the Chardonnay grapes on the vineyard that supplies the fruit for our Reserve Chardonnay. Consequently we shall not be releasing a 2009 Reserve Chardonnay.

Good news… We do have stock of 2005, 2006 and 2007 Reserve Chardonnays!

All of these wines have won trophies and many other awards and accolades.

If you have an interest in any of these wines please email me, Ken, directly at
office @ mistletoewines dot com
and I shall respond with pricing and pack options e.g. 4 bottles of each 2005, 2006, 2007 vintages.

These are all excellent wines and as one local winemaker of note said to me recently…

“These wines (Mistletoe Chardonnays) are world class.”