Welcome to the Winery at Harmans Ridge Estate
Harman’s Ridge Estate is a large modern state-of-the-art winery located on 17 picturesque hectares of rich, ochre soil shaded by tall stands of native trees. It currently has the capacity and winemaking resources to produce and store over 1.5 million litres per vintage.
The winery was built initially in 1998 as a contract facility to process fruit and provides the very best wine-making resources for premium growers that did not possess a winery of their own. Today we process fruit for twenty of the region’s most respected growers as well as selecting premium parcels of fruit for our own wine.
The winery employs the latest wine-making technology and has a fully equipped laboratory.
Each stage of production is computer monitored and sensory evaluated to ensure the winemaking aims are achieved using the latest techniques and plant is being constantly updated, reflecting the innovative nature of the Western Australian Wine Industry. This includes stringent temperature controls throughout production, anaerobic handling of white wines, barrel fermentation and maturation of the wine in temperature controlled barrel storage, the use of micro-oxygenation on red wines and-cross flow filtering technology.
Unwooded white wines are bottled within three months of harvest to maximize the varietal aromas and flavours of the wine and capture the subtle ferment esters. Red wine ferments are managed according to the wine style required and techniques employed include the use of enzymes for maximum colour and stability, cold soaking, extended maceration and variations on the length and type of pump-overs. Further demonstrating our commitment to the very latest winemaking technology we have recently installed a cross flow micro filtration system which allows the filtering process to conclude in hours instead of days.
The winery’s qualified winemakers perform maturity sampling and juice sensory evaluation of the grapes in the vineyard to ensure that the harvesting occurs at the precise time for the targeted wine style. At peak times the winery employs up to six winemakers. The past two harvests have seen a new innovative approach to winemaker selection, with winemakers being internationally sourced from countries such as France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Germany; bringing exciting, creative, new styles, skills and techniques to influence the development of the Harman’s Ridge range of wines.
Most harvesting is carried out in the cool of the night by state of the art machine harvesters except where whole bunch pressing is used to enhance the wine style. Delivery to the winery, only twenty minutes away maintains the high quality of grape juice so important in the winemaking process.