Village brilliance: The Grange by name, a grange by nature
Village residents have experienced different forms of life and for many, the mind remains sharp and willing to take on a new challenge.
There is no better example of that than BaptistCare NSW.ACT’s The Grange at Wagga Wagga, the regional city in the NSW Riverina region.
The Not for Profit bought The Grange retirement village in February 2022 from brothers Scott and Chris Nash.
Resident Ken Larkin, who has been at The Grange for eight years, takes up the story.
“The Nash brothers put in the vineyard and left the responsibility for managing the winery to the residents. Initially there were two or three people involved, then suddenly we would have a lot more people from the village involved. We formed a wine club. We now have over 60 members that are involved in the various tasks of running the vineyard.” It’s not easy work either.
“When there is a harvest, we will start about 6am. We finish about, I don’t know, 12pm, or 12:30pm on two days. It takes about two days to harvest the grapes. Then there are tasks pruning, and that’ll be coming up soon. So that’ll be an early start.
“Most of our members like to start early and finish early. They like their afternoons for some reason. That’s not a problem because we have fabulous morning tea. Sometimes a good barbecue at the end.”
Ken and his team enlisted the help of the Charles Stuart University (CSU), which has a campus in Wagga Wagga.
“One of the key tasks and the hardest task is the processing of the wine, using the press and then putting it into the vat. We have developed a relationship with CSU, the winemaker and it initially helped us produce a better wine. More recently they have taken over the processing of our wines. A couple of the heavy tasks are handled by the professionals,” Ken said.
How much wine is actually made?
“We can make 4000 bottles of wine. This year our harvest only resulted in about 2000 bottles. Getting 4000 bottles of wine, we mean a storage issue, a nice storage issue in trying to find a place to store the wine.”
The wine club grows tempranillo and shiraz grapes, which it converts into its best seller, The Grange rose. Shiraz and Tempranillo wines are also made.
Village Manager Sarah Young said growing and caring for the wine is a year-long pursuit and it keeps the residents occupied.
“It’s a very industrious village. The residents raise huge amounts of money for all different charities throughout the year.
“We have the bees as well. There’s a whole range of products produced from those. At the moment, there’s a table out in the community centre full of products that residents have made that they’re selling and raising money for charity.
“It’s an incredibly busy and productive village.”
The harvest for this year’s wines was in March and April and The Grange Wine Club members are now ready to bottle the wines.
“We should have 2000 bottles across our rosé and Brunello and Shiraz, and that will happen in July. And then we’ll start marketing and selling it in August. We’ll launch the rosé with a with a rosé launch in August, which we have traditionally done in the past,” Ken said.
“We have 100 or so people come along and taste the wine and they’ll take orders on the day. We generally sell 50% of the rosé on the day of the launch.”
The cost per bottle for this year’s rosé is $15.
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