Episode 430 takes you to Greenock in the Barossa, where small winemaker Joe Evans explains how solar panels and two Nissan Leaf EVs not only erased his power costs but made him what he believes is the world’s first winery to ferment, store and mature wine using car battery power at night, with Steve rounding out the episode with an original song reflecting on the state of the world.
Joe Evans was last on the show in 2018, picking grapes and talking about his craft. A lot has changed at Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellars since then. Joe has turned a $6,000-a-year electricity bill into a source of profit, using 33 kilowatts of solar, a bidirectional V2G converter, and two Nissan Leafs to run his house, his winery, and his cellar door without drawing from the grid. He believes Ballycroft is the world’s first winery to make and mature wine entirely on solar and car battery power. Photos of Joe for the show notes and the podcast player, were taken by Thomas Wielecki.
There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode, though Joe does give a tantalising description of his 100% Mataro and a very limited release Small Berry Shiraz Pressings 2022 that had already sold half its 400-bottle run within a month of release.
For the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve shares an original composition recorded with his virtual session band, The Virtuosos. Another Bloody Year was written just a fortnight before recording, prompted by rising fuel costs, global instability and a CS Lewis speech from 1939 that turns out to be as timely as ever.
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Running Sheet: Small Winemaker, Big Wines, Zero Power Bills
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week
There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week, but we encourage you to browse the Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellar online store.
00:04:19 Joe Evans, Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellars
If you have ever stared at a power bill and felt a quiet fury, Joe Evans is the person you need to hear. Back in the late 2010s, South Australian electricity was already the most expensive in the country at around 28 cents per kilowatt hour. It is now around 58 cents, which Joe says makes South Australia second most expensive in the Western world. His response was not to complain but to act.
The journey started in 2019 when Joe purchased a 40-kilowatt Nissan Leaf from a rural dealership, becoming what he believes was the first person in Australia to buy an EV from such a dealer. The car he specifically chose because it had bidirectional capability: charge it during the day, discharge it at night to power the house and winery. The catch was that the V2G converter needed to make that work took three and a half years to get Australian standards approval. Joe was the first residential and small business owner in the country to install one.
Walk through a 24-hour cycle at Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellars and you begin to see how elegantly the system operates. From around 6am, the car battery powers the morning rush: kettles, hair dryers, the household waking up. Once the sun rises and the 33-kilowatt solar array kicks in, the car recharges within an hour or two while simultaneously running the house and winery. During vintage, when the fermentation chillers are working hard around the clock, Joe uses one car’s full 60-kilowatt battery per night. His figure from last year: 42 kilowatts used across 42 days of fermentation. That is one kilowatt a day, or about 58 cents. Without the system, it would have been closer to $30 a day.
He is now running two Nissan Leafs, a “his and hers” arrangement after his wife fell in love with the original car. The second, a secondhand 2021 60-kilowatt model purchased for $36,000, he describes as a generator on wheels. He bought it primarily for the battery. A 50% government rebate later led him to add a home battery as well, though the cars still do the heavy lifting.
For listeners weighing up an EV, Joe offers practical advice grounded in four years of real-world use: keep the battery between 20% and 80%, never leave it at 100%, and prioritise V2G capability when choosing a car. He notes that Tesla has explicitly ruled out V2G to protect its wall battery sales, while many newer European and Chinese models are building it in. A new Wallbox Quasar 2 with CCS2 compatibility is expected to arrive at around $5,000, down from the $10,000 Joe paid.
The conversation also covers range anxiety (real but shrinking as infrastructure grows), tyre and brake wear (largely a non-issue in his experience), battery degradation (his six-year-old car has less degradation than comparable models that only drove, because running the house draws power far more gently than driving does), and what to do when the power goes out. Joe’s answer to that last one: nothing, because the system keeps running regardless.
“Have control of your own energy. It’s a good feeling.” – Joe Evans
00:59:58 Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Steve Davis & The Virtualosos’ new song, Another Bloody Year.
Steve frames this segment with a reference to John Schumann being told to stay in his lane after posting about Australian involvement in potential conflict, and responds with CS Lewis’s 1939 speech to Oxford students on the eve of the Second World War: “Life has never been normal.”
Against that backdrop, Steve shares an original song written a fortnight before recording, reflecting on the cost ordinary people pay when leaders make reckless decisions. The final verse lands with quiet force, borrowing a line from Schumacher: “All of us should live more simply so that others might simply live.” If there is a singer looking for material with genuine weight, Steve has flagged this one as available.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no video this week.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
430-The Adelaide Show
===
Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Hello, Steve Davis here. Welcome to episode 430 of the Adelaide Show Podcast. We’re reflecting on electric vehicles in this episode because the world is going through a really dark patch at the moment. Our security of supply of oil and all its derivatives, it’s under pressure, which has knock-on effects for just about everything.
It’s a pretty grim time, and it’s why many of us are finally contemplating electric vehicles. So our guest is Joe Evans. He’s the mastermind behind Buddy Craft Vineyard and Cellars, a wonderful winery up at Greenock, which is I guess within the Barossa Valley wider region. And he’s been on our show before.
He calls himself a little, a small wine maker. Big wines. That’s what he does. So he takes us generously through the whole process of his [00:01:00] thinking. His whole winery operation runs off solar electricity directly through the day. And then the residual charge that is in his Nissan leaf, he’s got two of them, two Nissan leaf cars, uh, their batteries hold charge.
And then as the sun disappears, those cars power the house and the winery operations. And he’s been doing this for about four and a half years, so plenty to say he’s got some words of advice for us if we are going to head down this path. Interestingly, he is of New Zealand origin originally, and he was telling me after we finished the interview that he said, look, the cost of living is a very real thing.
But we have to realize that people in New Zealand have been paying $2 59 or thereabouts a liter for ages. It’s now high $3, sometimes $4 a liter. And yes, that’s New Zealand dollars. And yes, they’re worth about 80 cents compared to the Australian, but people still [00:02:00] earn within that. So it’s a, it’s a good parody.
What they’re paying there is relative to what we are paying here, and we are kind of catching up on the way fuel is priced in other parts of the world. It doesn’t mean we, we want to join that tribe, but he, he has that dual country, um, point of observation to compare what we’re experiencing now with what New Zealand is having.
I’m sure there’s heaps of differences between the two nations, uh, but I just thought that was an interesting point to share. And then at the end of our interview, uh, in the musical pilgrimage, we’re going to play a song by Steve Davis at the Virtuosos, uh, one that I wrote, reflecting on the state of the world, did this about two weeks ago.
It’s called Another Bloody Year. And, uh, for me, a guest of the heart of where the world is and where we are as individuals. Trying to do our best to get through the night as [00:03:00] John Lennon once sang. Enjoy the program,
Theme: refugees Lady
Caitlin Davis: in the Spirit of Reconciliation. The Adelaide Show Podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout South Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples [00:04:00] today.
Theme: That lady,
lady, lady.
Steve Davis: Some guests feel like old friends the moment you sit down and my guest. Today is no exception. His name is Joe Evans. Now, it was back in 2018, April of 2018 for episode 241 that I spent a day, well, half a day, uh, in the vines picking grapes with Joe Sue some backpackers, some other locals. That episode, which I encourage you to listen to, was called Small Winemaker Big Wines, which is the the label that Joe puts upon himself.
What I didn’t know back then was that Belly Craft was about to become a [00:05:00] nationally recognized pioneer in sustainable energy with Joe turning his $6,000 a year power bill into a source of profit. Using little more than sunshine and a Nissan Nissan Leaf named zero with global oil under pressure at the moment.
Petrol prices making everyone wince at the browser. We are back in Greenock to get the real story from someone who’s lived that alternative for about four odd years now. Joe Evans, welcome back to the Adelaide Show.
Joe Evans: Thank you very much. And, um, uh, I must admit that episode we did way back in the day was, uh, very enjoyable.
And, uh, it was good to see getting your hands red and, and a bit of dirt, and luckily no bandaids required for you because those snips can be rather sharp. But it was the end of the day enjoying a, a red wine with you and, and a red wine with you over many years. Um, it’s been, um, uh, a, a [00:06:00] blossoming friendship that, uh, blossomed through a fat cat.
I believe that is correct.
Steve Davis: Yes. Good old Ralph Hadik. He was our connective tissue. But then since then, I mean, a recent episode was Steve Davis, the retired Tess Cricket Empire.
Joe Evans: Yes.
Steve Davis: Happened because he wandered into your vineyard
Joe Evans: Zor and, and I’m not a cricket fan. And then, uh, and I asked the gentleman at the end of the tasting, you know, what do you guys do?
Like, you get in the conversation and, oh no, he, he filled out his form to have wine sent to his house and his surname, well, his full name was Steve Davis. And I went, well, I know Steve Davis. Um, he does, he interviews famous South Australians and, and led to me connecting you to him. And an exceptional if listeners out there, they should be listening, uh, uh, if you’re into cricket.
Um, what some wonderful stories Steve Davis has.
Steve Davis: He did. He did.
Joe Evans: Yes. And, and so I digress. I’ll [00:07:00] start you and I’ll give you fill in of our, uh, our sustainable history. So, well,
Steve Davis: I’m, I’m gonna take you there, Joe, in just a moment. But before I do, I just wanna note you mentioned. Um, there is, there is something about continuity before we talk about what was different in your winery, and that is yesterday at the time of recording, you had people come up again to help.
Joe Evans: I did indeed. Uh, we had, we picked our diff again, which, uh, diff is, uh, uh, the French name is Petit. You generally pick a little bit later, generally three to four weeks after Shiraz. Um, it’s a very, very small berry, makes a very dark, concentrated black wine. And uh, we were one of the first to plant IFF in South Australia.
It’s been growing in, in Victoria for over a hundred years. Um, I fell in love with the grape variety in California.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Joe Evans: Um, as an exchange student when I was 17, 18. And that’s where I fell in love with, uh, this, uh, solar and V two G on returning to [00:08:00] California in 2015 and saw what they were doing in California.
There and went. I can do that.
Steve Davis: Well, there’s the seed being planted. ’cause I was going to ask you to start our chat by taking your mind back before you did all of this, what was the power, the energy situation like, you know, in the late 20 teens, for example, what was it like running Ballycroft off on the grid?
Joe Evans: Well, um, well running Ballycroft, uh, we used our salad. We used to have a cheesery.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: And, uh, back then, uh, the cheesery, we had a big, um, 200 liter pasteurizer, which used, uh, a lot of gas, energy to heat and cool, um, and water to Cool, cool the milk. So, uh, the electricity energy wasn’t too bad. But then, um, back then I did install eight [00:09:00] kilowatts on the house.
And that would make the house reasonably self-sufficient nine months of the year. But in the winter when you have less sunlight and you are heating the house with an air conditioner, um, uh, a lot less, but you got 18 cents, um, feed and tariff.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: So all that money and you were making $2,000 a year. Um, my wine though, I used to make and process my wine at Murray Street, um, just down the road from us.
Mm-hmm. So power for making the wine wasn’t too bad. I just stored wine here. So, um, power bills weren’t too bad. And back then power was about 28 cents a kilowatt. Still the highest in, in, in Australia. Um, now I believe it’s about 58 cents a kilowatt in most of South Australia, which apparently is nearly, uh, the second highest in the Western world.
We pay 10 to 15 cents more than any other state for electricity. Which is insane. [00:10:00] Um, it’s because South Australian government doesn’t own our power network. SA Power Network is owned by an overseas consortium, uh, headed up by a Hong Kong very, uh, uh, rich gentleman and mostly, and the other half is mostly owned by Canadian.
Um, super. So every Nurse Mounty
Steve Davis: Yes.
Joe Evans: Police officer, all their super, every time a South Australian pays, um, a, a retired Canadian makes money from us, and, and they can set the price any way they want. But it’s the retailers making the money though.
Steve Davis: Yes. So it’s their nest egg.
Joe Evans: Yes,
it’s,
Steve Davis: and it used to be ours.
Um, but there’s a whole host of reasons where that conversation happened. Back in the day, rightly or wrongly. Uh, and hindsight’s a beautiful thing. [00:11:00] What is it like now at Barcroft? I wonder if you can take me through a 24 hour cycle of what is actually happening with power. And perhaps if we start the moment the sun comes up, that will take us chronologically through, through what it’s like to give people the picture.
’cause you have had plenty of national press on what you’ve done, but this is for us. We are the in team here in South Australia. We just wanna relax through this story and really sit at your feet and learn.
Joe Evans: No worries. Now, um, we’ll, we’ll go back four and a half years ago. Um, we, well we purchased a Nissan Nissan Leaf six, seven years ago.
Um, 2019. We were the first people in to buy a Nissan Nissan Leaf, an electric Nissan and Leaf from a rural dealership in Australia. And we brought it from
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: Um. And I wanted this particular 40 kilowatt NIS and leaf because it had the ability to go about 280 [00:12:00] kilometers. So for us to drive into Adelaide and back is about, um, 150 kilometers round trip.
And so you got plenty leftover. Yeah. Yeah. And with the, the media at the time, degradation of a Nissan Leaf over 10 years, it, it’ll be 10% less. So now that Nissan and Leaf is six years old, let’s say it can go about 240 kilometers. But still it can get you to Adelaide and back. Yes. Quite easily. And it’s got all the mod cons, it’s got air conditioner, all the stuff.
A lot of people think back then thought, uh, an electric car was like a little mini mo with um, and, and was just an upgrade of a golf car. But this an is an exceptional that, that Atni and Leaf was, um, car of the Year, I believe. Yeah.
Steve Davis: And also I, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure there was a local Barroso Magazine feature article done on you buying that car back in the day.
Joe Evans: Yes, yes. There was. And there was, um, well multimedia everywhere, but that was, uh, down the track.
Steve Davis: [00:13:00] Yep.
Joe Evans: Now I specifically purchased that automobile because it was one of the few and only, um, electric EV cars that had bidirectional capability. Bidirectional meaning you charge the car during the day.
Theme: Mm-hmm.
Then
Joe Evans: you discharge the car at night and you can power. Your house, your, um, your business, your small business. And, but the problem was the unit that could do that, a V two G converter, and the brand was wall box hadn’t been approved to be used in Australia yet because Australian standards are a lot more difficult.
And so it had to get a, and it took nearly three years. And, and that was done nis uh, the head of Nissen, uh, uh, Warren and, uh, jet Charge, the company that were importing this, the wall box brand of V two G converter did [00:14:00] massive amounts of work, um, uh, to try and get that approved. And it took three and a half years and we were one of, we were the first resident in Australia to install a V two G converter vehicle grid.
And, um. So
Steve Davis: in retrospect, Joe, just sorry to interrupt. Do you think that was warranted that three and a half years because a lot can go wrong when you’re playing with voltage or was it just bureaucracy in the two hard basket?
Joe Evans: I think it was a bit of both. I thought they could see, oh my goodness, all these people with electric cars and electric car, well, I’ll never buy power in my life again.
And, uh, but also to, you are putting power back on the grid. You know, this electric car, it’s called V two home. I could do V two home vehicle to your house and it can do V two G vehicle to grid. So any power that’s not being used by the house at the time Yep. Goes back onto the grid at, you know, six, seven o’clock at night.
Um, [00:15:00] and, and it can put six kilowatts an hour back on the grid. Um, or I can discharge the car at six kilowatts an hour, six kilowatts can run my entire winery, which is pretty good. Yeah. Um, and yes. The standards in Australia. Yes. They were being very careful.
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: Because, um, but then you’ve got battery systems that do that and they got approval a little bit quicker, so, you know, so, um, but you’re dealing with a bigger battery.
But, uh, they were being cautious without question.
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: Um, but finally got approval and, and we got it in and well, one, I believe we were the, we were the first resident and the first small business, but I believe we were the first winery in the world to power and to make store and mature my wine with power at nighttime from a battery of a car.[00:16:00]
And, and I did it not for greenwashing.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: I did it firstly to be self-sufficient. Yeah. Yeah. And secondly, to save money.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: Which, yes, the overall cost to buy it and your listeners are out there. I can’t afford electric car and that a V two G converter was $10,000. Yeah. Which is a lot of money. Where a standard car charger was only a thousand dollars.
Fast charger.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: But in the long run, you save money. Yeah. And, and, and I’ve already got all the money back.
Steve Davis: I want to come into that cycle that we talked about before. Yes. How it works. However, before I do, when you mentioned the reason you wanted to do it, first up reason was to be self-sustainable,
Joe Evans: correct.
Steve Davis: I, I wanna share. It was about, oh, I reckon two years ago, just under that, we took the plunge and got some solar panels on our place and a battery. And I spent the first three or four weeks [00:17:00] gobsmacked that the world had not more widely adopted. This power that we can grab from the sun, it seems humankind has put its energy into better missiles that they can drop around the place.
Can you imagine what this world would be like if we had matured even faster? This technology of capturing and storing energy from the sun, it, it’s mind blowing, Joe. Mind blowing.
Joe Evans: There was a quote, um, uh, uh, uh. Uh, I’m trying to think of his name, but he wrote a book all about Green Energy and Sol Griffith is his name.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: And the book he wrote, uh, uh, uh, the Big switch. The Big Switch. And in that if, if the world made solar panels instead of the [00:18:00] amount of bullets they make, all power would be free everywhere in the world. Yeah.
Steve Davis: It’s staggering.
Joe Evans: Yeah. And, and this whole, to me, the staggering bit is South Australia has the most expensive power, but for seven months of the year, the power grid is, there’s so much solar wherein the, the power companies, it’s in the negative.
So why is power not free to everybody in South Australia?
Caitlin Davis: Mm-hmm. If
Joe Evans: the power grid is ne it’s, the system is completely wrong. To me, I think it’s like telephones. Telephones. You must make phone calls. I, I’d make an international call, um, to New Zealand for my mother every Sunday. And it was $1 a minute and you’d speak for 20 minutes and then hang up because after that 20 minutes it got even more expensive.
Now I can do a zoom meeting like I am with you.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: Uh, to my family in New Zealand. And it practically [00:19:00] costs the internet connection. Yeah. And it and in it will in 10 years time. 20 years time, a lot more people will have EVs you, you, you, you mostly charge at home anyway. And, but supermarkets, every supermarket you go to will have a charging station.
Steve Davis: I saw an image from, I think it was Victoria yesterday, of a brand new apartment building built where they’ve got, where there are four car parks next to each other in the middle where they join. Hanging from the ceiling is a four way point that every single tenant, without having to book queue anything, can just plug their car in and charge while they’re there.
Joe Evans: Yep.
Steve Davis: It’s, it is pretty incredible. And look, um, I know I said, I, I actually, this was a question I wanna ask you later, but I’ll ask it now. I do. I went a bit babbly after that conversion ’cause I was blown away at the genius that [00:20:00] humankind can muster that sometimes I felt like I was leading a cult and, and try to convert people.
Have you. Caught yourself trying almost like you are out there trying to bring believers into your fold or not. How do you manage that?
Joe Evans: Well, a big thing, uh, right now is you don’t wanna pair too smug.
Steve Davis: No.
Joe Evans: Yeah, yeah. Because, uh, it puts people off. But every single person that comes to our cell door, I tell them what we’re doing and how we power our with a V two G converter.
And I would say 95% of the people don’t realize an electric car has the ability to do this.
Theme: Yeah.
Joe Evans: And, um, for me also too, well, um, uh, a, a 40 kilowatt battery for your house five years ago cost [00:21:00] $40,000. Yeah. And, uh, we already had a Nissan length and using V two G like we do. You happen to go out to basketball, which we go to the 36 ERs and we might go to football.
The fringe we went to um, probably 10 events. So 10 nights during Adelaide, that car isn’t here powering your house. So, um, we bought a secondhand Nissan Leaf, so I bought a 60 kilowatt 2021 Nissans and Leaf, and it was secondhand, it had only done 4,000 kilometers. And I brought this about three years ago where the price of, um, secondhand, um, um, electric cars were, were, were dropping.
And I, that car brand new has a 60 kilowatt battery and it was sold for $60,000. Yeah. Even that’s cheap because it’s a 60 kilowatt battery Yeah. That you can drive. [00:22:00] Yeah. And I got up $36,000. So I purchased a 60 kilowatt battery for $36,000 and I brought it for the battery. And at the time it was half price, but it was also a brand new car.
It’s a generator on wheels. Yeah. To me it was an absolute no brainer. And now we’ve got Twoness and Leafs. We’ve got a his and a hers, because I did buy that original a Nissan and Leaf for me. Yeah. But I must admit, I’ve hardly ever driven it. My wife absolutely loves driving it. And it, it’s a, it’s a really, uh, excellent car.
The second Nissan Leaf, uh, 60 kilowatt can drive about 380 kilometers in distance. So we can get to the river and back. We can get to the York Peninsula. We can get all the way down to, um, uh, uh, Victor Harbor and, and, uh, and have an ice cream and get all the way back and having that little bit more, no, we can’t drive to, um, Perth, but, um, [00:23:00] I fly to Perth.
Yeah.
Steve Davis: When you park overnight in your hotel. And, you know, you’ve got battery left. Does the battery charge decay or how long would the battery charge hold its charge? Because I would have anxiety going to sleep at night going, oh, will the, will that battery still hold its charge in the morning?
Joe Evans: Of course it does.
It holds, its um, uh, a big, uh, a big another misnomer with electric cars is, you know, they’re gonna run out. Um, the batteries will be no good in 10 years, you know, um, and also using your battery to run your house. You’ll have more battery degradation. And, uh, we, after two years of running our house, we sent all the statistics to Nissan in Australia and they did all the data for our electric car.
They’ve got similar electric cars that had done 60,000 kilometers the same as ours and tested their batteries. Our car had actually, um, had less degradation than a normal one because you’re only [00:24:00] downloading two or three kilowatts an hour. When you drive a car, you are downloading it at six 14 to 18 kilowatts an hour because you use about 16 kilowatts to 18 kilowatts per a hundred kilometers.
AJ Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: That’s how many kilowatt hours you use. And the worst thing is leaving your car sitting in your shed at a hundred percent. That would degrade your car and not using it more than anything. It’s like a lot of you have battery tools, you know, you got, um, you know, you, you, you jigsaw and all that stuff.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Joe Evans: A lot of people charge them up. There’s little batteries with their makis and then leave them stored a hundred percent. Worst thing I run my cars between 20%. I’d never let the car get less than 20%. And you don’t charge ’em up, you only charge ’em up to 80%. You keep ’em 20%, 80% range. Yep, you’re fine.
Steve Davis: But once it’s charged, it’ll sit like that for days or weeks or
Joe Evans: sit like that.
I don’t [00:25:00] know. A year.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: Easy. It’s not using, when you drive the car and you’re sitting in a stoplight, you are not using energy when you’re sitting there for five minutes at a stoplight in a petrol car. It’s still using petrol.
Theme: Yeah.
Joe Evans: And producing carbon monoxide average distance, an Australian drives in Australia is 33 kilometers in distance.
And I did all my figures last year. We drive a little bit more. Yeah. We drive about, the average is about 12,000 kilometers a year for a person. We drive about 16,500. And just having solar, charging your car, saving money, we, um, we save about 2000, uh, about, um, uh, yeah, two and a half thousand dollars a year or $2,000 a year.
But now Petrol’s gone up. We save even more.
Steve Davis: Yes. [00:26:00]
Joe Evans: The, the, the more money electricity goes up and the more money, uh, petrol goes up, the more money we save it because my electricity and my, uh, say my energy, my money to use for transport, um, it was set when I purchased that V two G converter for 10,000, it was set at say, uh, um, you know, 8 cents a kilowatt, uh, 8 cents a kilometer.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: The rest of my life, you know, for 10 years. Yeah. And yeah. Oh, I did all the maths made. It just all made sense.
Steve Davis: We are coming back to my cycle question eventually, but you’ve also, you’ve also touched on dry, uh, distance anxiety. That, that
Joe Evans: Ah, yes.
Steve Davis: And talk us more about that. Because I, I, I will just say I had a moment of revelation recently in Perth.
One of my daughters [00:27:00] was in the National Kayaking Championships, and we hired a car while over for them just as these petrol prices were going up. And it dawned on me that if I did have an EV at home and I was going to do an extended trip, which would be typically for work, I would just rent a car for a few days to do that, a petrol or hybrid and, and take range anxiety off the table while having more than enough to do what I need to do.
Joe Evans: Yeah.
Steve Davis: What, what do you think of that mindset and what do you think about range anxiety as a deal?
Joe Evans: Well, range anxiety is a real thing, and it’s, it’s a real thing. It used to be a bigger. Thing five years ago when electric cars could only go 250, 300 kilometers. A lot of the new EVs coming out now and the, and the, and the trucks, um, can go 800 kilometers in distance.
Steve Davis: That’s the same as the tank of petrol.
Joe Evans: It’s the same as the tank of petrol. And honestly, and, and the, these, these are [00:28:00] quotes, um, uh, uh, from jet charge and um, from other solar, uh, 80, I think 80% of people that own electric cars charge at home with solar. ’cause it makes sense. ’cause you use your electric car for commuting and most households have a second car and that second car will be a hybrid or a petrol car.
So no problem. But a lot of electric car people have, EVs are now getting the second car as ev there, the infrastructure, five years ago around Australia, you couldn’t get around Australia. There are ev charging stations all around Australia. They’re all the way you can drive now from, from here to Melbourne, from Melbourne all the way to Cooktown, there’s a charging station every a hundred kilometers.
There used to be some smaller ones. Now the, the charging infrastructure is huge, and that’s R-A-A-R-A-V, um, charge Fox, [00:29:00] um, to name a few. Have, um, put all those in. And state governments, federal governments, um, have put them in. I I never charge at them, but if I had to, if I drove to Melbourne, I’d maybe have to charge twice.
And the charging stations are there. You just have to plan your trip. Like if you planned your trip in a petrol car, you’re gonna plan it. An EV though, an a, a Tesla, a kia, um, any electric car, the car will tell you that you don’t have enough distance to get to your destination. So you have to stop off here and charge.
Yeah, we, by the way, I installed, um, the first test of the car charging station, uh, at a Bross Valley Winery.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: Um, we, and that was nearly nine and a half years ago.
Steve Davis: Gee, that seems like a long time.
Joe Evans: Yep. We installed that, oh, nearly 10 years ago. We installed it two days before Elon Musk was coming to open [00:30:00] up the biggest battery in the world at Jamestown.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: Um, I approached Tesla. I said, we are 70 Ks from Adelaide. Have a small cellar door. I would like to put in Tesla car charging stations because I knew I was going to be getting a, an electric car in about a year’s time. They gave me two, they gave them to me. ’cause Tesla wanted a a car, car charging station all around Australia, which they nearly did, but they’re quite a slow, they’re a slow charge.
You know, it takes, they only do three or four kilowatts an hour, so you’re gonna be sitting there for 10 hours. Um, to fill up your tank, to get somewhere else, but it’s, it’s free. While people sit there for an hour, they, they get another hour’s journey in their electric car. Um, so Elon Musk, they, there were no Teslas in Australia, in South Australia from ’em to drive in.
So they trucked one down from Sydney. Yeah. And, and I got my, rang up my electrician, I said, quickly, can [00:31:00] you put in this Tesla, the car charging station? Elon Musk is coming tomorrow? And he goes, yes, I, I’ll do it for, you know, six bottles of wine and that I get to meet him. ’cause back then, 10 years ago you wanted to meet Elon Musk.
Yes, he was charismatic, he was awesome. He was, uh, ruling the EV thing. Maybe not so much. I do, I wanna meet him now, but that’s another story. And so, and I got it all ready for him and he was gonna come and then he flew up there in a helicopter, went to Jamestown, cut the ribbon back in the helicopter back and back to Sydney.
And he was out of this country within an hour. ’cause he did the big promise, if this battery isn’t installed in Australia within two months, it’s free. He only said that ’cause it was already on the boat coming here. And it was all pr. But you know, um, the
Steve Davis: Barnum and Bailey, the
Joe Evans: barn and bay effort. And we, and we put in, two of them, we put in and we offer free charging to any electric car, not just the Tesla from our solar panels.
And back then [00:32:00] we would get one a month. Now we get one electric car a week. Yeah. Now it’s maybe nearly two a week.
Steve Davis: I now, this is new territory for me, so I’m sure I’ve driven or I have driven to Melbourne quite a bit lately in Sydney. I have probably driven past ev charging and not even noticed them.
It’s one of those things, you buy a yellow car and you see all the yellow cars. I might start seeing them now as I drive around. How long is it? About 45 minutes to top up a car on a trip like that? Oh,
Joe Evans: well that depends on the charger. So right now in uh, we, uh, about a year and a half ago, were installed the fastest charging 150 kilowatts an hour.
Steve Davis: Gee whiz.
Joe Evans: And there’s about five of them. Yeah. And they’ll charge you during the day when the solar is out. Um, and sa powers hardly anything. They’ll charge you, um, I don’t know, um, 40 cents a kilowatt, but if you go there after dark, [00:33:00] then it’s 90 cents a kilowatt. So it equates nearly, nearly, um. Less than, less than petrol, but still.
But you, you get to charge a car. If you have, um, an, um, electric car and you need 30 kilowatts, it’ll charge that within 15 to 20 minutes. And at that, um, fuel station, there’s a McDonald’s, there’s a Chinese shop, there’s KFC, there’s, um, yeah. So you, like everybody else, you have a stop charge it up and, and an electric car every 500 kilometers, every, um, 400 kilometers, you’re supposed to have a stop anyway and have a cup of coffee, you know?
Yes. So you’re supposed to And everybody driving. Oh, driving a thousand kilometers or, you know, you’re gonna stop somewhere.
Steve Davis: My question though, about these, uh, charging stations, how do you know it’s gonna fit your car? Or are they all universal?
Joe Evans: Uh, there’s only two types of, um, uh, car [00:34:00] charging plugs.
There’s, um, uh, a chato plug. Fast charger, which Nissan and Leaf use?
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: And there’s a CC two, which is a combined plug. Yeah. So it combines AC and DC on the one plug, and it’s now Universal. Nissen have gone with the electric cars to CCS two.
Steve Davis: Okay.
Joe Evans: Yep. Um, so the reason Nissan and Leaf were the first to use V two G is because it was on a chatter mode plug.
Uh, and, and it’s not like, uh, that’s for your phone. That’s, um, that’s analog and that’s an apple, you know, slightly different plug. No, it’s completely different technology. Yeah. And you, you know, you can’t charge carts, different plugs and
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: But d the, the Chato plug was a lot safer and had it’s been around a lot longer.
So it was approved for V two G. Problem is. [00:35:00] Uh, now all the V two G converters that war box are making, they’re not making the chatty mode plug anymore. They’re only making CCCs two plug ones. Problem is most electric cars can’t do V two G. You. It has to be made. Tesla have said Elon must has quoted, I’ll never have my cars do V two G because he wants to sell you Tesla wall batteries.
So if your car can charge a car, why are you gonna buy Tesla wall battery? Yeah. But a lot of the new European cars that are coming out now, yeah, bmw, Skoda, Volvo, Volvo, a lot of the BYD, but not all of them.
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: Their Chinese made cars are all coming out and have V two G capabilities.
Steve Davis: Okay. Now,
Joe Evans: not to be confused with, you’ve got a lot of electric cars that have V two L.
Which is vehicle to load. So basically it’s like having your lighter in your car, you know, that you used to light your cigarettes with, and everybody plugs [00:36:00] into that to charge your phones or whatever. Well, there’s a plug in inside those cars and it, and you could plug in your fridge or your freezer if you, if the power’s off and, and, uh, you can download about one, one and a half kilowatts.
So you could boil a kettle. You could be out in the bush and you could plug into your, into your ute.
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: You know, and you can recharge your tools. Um, uh, but few cars can do actual V two G, which is vehicle to grid the F 100 in the USA, they, that was a massive promotion five years ago that the new F 100 e, uh, EV version and, and Ford and, and the USA, you know, everybody that has a bought F 100 truck can charge their house as well.
Steve Davis: Alright. Which brings us right back to one of my early questions, which we haven’t got to yet. We will now take us through a 24 hour cycle at Batty CR [00:37:00] Winery.
Joe Evans: Okay. So we will, um, you know, you, you get up and, uh, you know, it’s time, it’s cold. Um, you plug the car in and download from six o’clock to nine o’clock in the morning when you’re boiling the kettle and you’re, uh, cooking your fried eggs from all your free range eggs from your homemade chickens.
Theme: Yes.
Joe Evans: And, um, and you’ve got a lovely wife and a daughter, both with hair dryers using up all that power before the sun comes up. And, uh, as you see, it didn’t blow hype blow away.
Steve Davis: It didn’t,
Joe Evans: uh, I, well it was daylight I could have. And, um,
Steve Davis: so
Joe Evans: this
Steve Davis: hour is coming still from the car battery.
Joe Evans: The car battery. And then, then you turn it off.
Um, you know, you might even turn it off at eight o’clock ’cause all your, all your electric chores are done and, and the solar hasn’t quite kicked off. Summertime, you nearly don’t have to do it ’cause you’re getting solar from seven o’clock.
Theme: Yeah.
Joe Evans: But wintertime, [00:38:00] you know, you not get enough solar till eight 30 and um, then, then you turn that around and charge the car and top it up.
Yeah. My wife will drive one of those cars to work. Yeah. And she drives that car to work every day, um, for four days. And, but there’s enough charge in that she only drives a 14 kilometer round trip. There’s enough battery in that car to go to work for three weeks. And we generally charge that car at the weekend.
The other electric car though, is at home and it’s bit of a house battery. And, um, then you, you know, it doesn’t take long for that car to top up because overnight you’ve only used, you know. Seven or eight kilowatts in the spring in autumn. But yeah, you might use 25 kilowatts in the summer, in the winter when you’ve got the air con going.
Yep. Either heating or corn and 20 kilowatts. We have 33 kilowatts of solar, [00:39:00] so that battery is recharged within, you know, an hour between midday and one is enough power to recharge that car within an hour
Steve Davis: while still running your house and the winery.
Joe Evans: Oh no. Yeah. Well it’s during the day because during the day the solar’s running out.
Yes,
Steve Davis: exactly.
Joe Evans: And, and, and you’re only using the battery at night and see you’re not, a lot of people say, oh, well you won’t have any battery left to drive somewhere in the morning. But out of a 60 kilowatt battery of a car, I’ve only used seven or 10 kilowatts most of the time. And yes, yes, we’ve had a hot summer used 25 30 kilowatts a night.
Yeah. But it only takes two hours to recharge it in the day.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: Now, if we are going to Adelaide and you need, you’re planning, um, to, to go the night before, or you make sure that car’s charged up and you might might come home with the other one and use the, use the other one to charge a house, but there’s, there’s plenty of it to [00:40:00] do.
Now, this, this is a scenario from four years ago because the, the government, um, said to Australians, well, you can have a 50% rebate if you buy a house battery. Now, I didn’t need one, but I purchased one because it was 50% off. And as a small business, you get a $20,000 asset, um, depreciation free. So I purchased, um, uh, $20,000 worth of BA house battery, um, to put on the house.
And so now we have a house battery as well. But seen, I have a winery. As well attached to all this grid system when I have the chiller going, because when you, when you make wine and you turn fructose, that’s the sugar mm-hmm. Into alcohol that produces lots and lots of heat. So if you don’t cool that wine down it, the ferment, it will get really, really hot.
It’ll kill the yeast and the ferment stop. So [00:41:00] I have to chill it. So to run my chiller, it uses all, you know, four kilowatts an hour. It’s massive. And I’m running that for 24 hours for 12 days of ferment. So it uses massive amounts of power during vintage, um, which I’ll be, I just, I’ve got RO and RIF fermenting.
It hasn’t started ticking off yet, but all the rest of this week, I’ll be using 30 to 40 kilowatts a night using all of one car a night. Yeah. And using all of one car and some of the house battery. But I’m making the wine using no power. I’ll give you a quote from last year.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Joe Evans: For 42 days of me fermenting wine.
Yeah. ’cause we make a very small amount of wine. Only do about 14 ton, but it’s never ready at the same time. ’cause we do different varieties. 40 days of fermenting mine. I used [00:42:00] 42 kilowatts of power. One kilowatt a day. Yeah. So it cost me 58 cents a day to make my wine. If I hadn’t, if I did not have solar, and if I didn’t have a battery or, and I, and I didn’t have a, an electric car, it, over those 42 days, it would’ve cost me nearly $30 a day.
What a, what a saving.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Wow. And, but see now you’ve got the, and
Joe Evans: and the power went off and the power went off a few times. And we’re self-sufficient.
Steve Davis: Yes. Winter, how do we cope in winter? I mean, admittedly the winery’s probably not being as energy intensive during winter.
Joe Evans: No. Well, in the winter, having, yeah.
So this system isn’t good for every small business. Yes. But a winery, you don’t heat a winery, you know, you’re trying to keep the wine in the barrels at 12 degrees. [00:43:00] Yeah. Well, uh, we have an insulated, uh, winery, which I built with the roof at a slope of 15 and a half degrees for maximum winter sunlight.
Yeah.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: So, uh, generally, most days in winter, we have ample power and we can recharge the cars. But you have a sunny day, uh, a 33 kilowatt system will still produce, you know, two, 200 kilowatts in a day, you know, 180. And I’m in the wintertime, I’m still only using 30.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: On a winter’s day. Raining all day for three days, I’ll still.
Produce 30 kilowatts in a day and I might not completely fully charge the car again. Um, ’cause I only charge the car when it’s sunny and, but you’d never have seven days of cloudy, rainy day in Adelaide. It’s generally one or two days.
Theme: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: So within a week you still get enough power. Um, maybe [00:44:00] once in the month of November.
It was very wet and very cold or very rainy for many days. And we used a little bit of man’s power. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Yeah. It’s
Joe Evans: funny. I might have used 10 kilowatts for the entire month.
Steve Davis: It’s funny you mentioned November. ’cause I was watching our solar during that time going, oh gee, we’re, we’re pushing uphill here a little bit.
So what, what I like about this is your. A viticulture. You, you, you are growing your grapes, you are making your wines. This is a viticultural pursuit. You are with the land, you are watching the land, you are watching the weather. I’m not, I’m in a city thing. I’m conscious of it, but not closely aware of it.
When you become aware and you’re watching solar, I think there’s a way that it brings us back to ta paying attention to when there’s sunlight, when the conditions are different. [00:45:00] Managing so that, okay, if, if we don’t have as much, I get our family just to be smarter. We shift when we do things. So do, and in a way, Joe, it brings us city people a little bit into the rhythm of what it is like to live with the land.
Joe Evans: Yes. A little bit. And well with nature. Say
Steve Davis: yes.
Joe Evans: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, in the wintertime, I’m out pruning all day. And I use my house as a heat bank, so it’s sunny. So you turn your air conditioner on to 24 degrees and you heat your house with all the solar you can because you only get getting 3 cents a kilowatt for it.
So no point putting it back on the grid. Use it to heat your house and you use your house as a heat battery. Yeah. And then at six, five o’clock at night come home I light the fire. Yeah. ’cause we have lots of trees on our property and you have gum trees fall down and [00:46:00] things. I’m not buying firewood. I’m using my own sustainable firewood on from our property.
And you chop it up and you, and then you get the fire going and you turn the air conditioner off because the sun’s gone down. Yeah,
Steve Davis: yeah.
Joe Evans: Now having car batteries, well my life is even more comfortable from six to nine o’clock at night until you get into bed. You have the air conditioner going and my life is more comfortable.
Now. Yeah.
Steve Davis: The Nissan and Leaf. I mean, I’m coming towards the end with some really high gain questions for people who are pondering this. The first thing is how do you service an electric vehicle? Do they need servicing? What’s involved?
Joe Evans: Do they need servicing? Yes. To keep your warranty up. So, ’cause a Nissan, Nissan Leaf, uh, there was a five year warranty on the car, but an eight year warranty on the battery.
So if that battery at eight years is below [00:47:00] 80%, you get a free battery.
Steve Davis: Okay.
Joe Evans: Um, uh, and
Steve Davis: so what do they do at a service?
Joe Evans: Oh, they change the wiper blades.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Oil.
Joe Evans: There’s no oil. Uh, yes, they’ll check your brakes. That’s a big thing. Um, but seen in, uh, most electric cars use regenerative braking. You actually hardly ever use your brakes because as you slow down it put power back into your battery.
Yeah.
Steve Davis: Yes, I know. I, I’ve driven a Camry hybrid. This is my second one. Um, it’s about six years old. The other ones got to about five or six. I was shocked. I think we changed brake, brake pads maybe once. And they keep saying, no, your brakes are little at 95% a
Joe Evans: and they say they electric cars go through tires more because the heavier.
I haven’t found that. Okay. We’re still, still got the original tires on our Nissan leaf and it’s done 70,000 kilometers.
Steve Davis: Now you’re a leaf man. Um, you see a lot of cars. If someone was [00:48:00] poised to make some decisions now, is there anything you would observe and, and share from an observational perspective?
Joe Evans: Well, um, I, I would work out how many kilometers you do a year, how far you have to drive daily, as in the majority of the time.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: And get an electric car that can cover that in distance. Yep. Um, and if you say go once a fortnight for a big trip to go and see your mother-in-law. We’ll make sure that has, that electric car has the ability to do that.
Secondly, make sure the electric car you purchase has V two JV two G capabilities. ’cause the, the new wall box two will be out very soon with a, with a, uh, CCS two plug plug on it. The, they won’t be $10,000. The word is they’ll be around $5,000 and, uh, for $5,000 you’ve got access to a lot of these cars will have an 80 kilowatt battery.[00:49:00]
Yeah. You could run your house per a week, two weeks just on the battery of your car.
Steve Davis & The Virtualosos: Mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: Yeah. Um, and then you look at all Western Australia right now. All the whole coast of northern interior, Western Australia had one big cyclone cover the whole lot. I think it’s arriving here today. Is it not that cyclone?
Yeah, but it’s below us. So it’s, we, we might get a little bit of wind, the amount of destruction and all the power lines go out. It, you know, if you’ve got, uh, the wall box V two G, um, uh, Chatham, it’s uh, quasar, it’s a wall box Quasar two, when the power goes off, it can run, you can run your entire property from the battery of your car.
Just make sure that electric car, whatever brand it is,
Steve Davis: mm-hmm.
Joe Evans: Has V two G capabilities. A lot of American, uh, electric cars, Ford, um. Most of their electric cars have B two G and all the newer brands, but [00:50:00] BYD have some, um, you know, exceptional looking cars. I do. I got to drive an electric mini. God isn’t my first car was a mini, you know, it was a 1968.
You’re loaded to the ground. You feel like you’re going fast. These little new electric minis, my God, are they awesome to drive? Problem is they can’t go very far. The batteries in, in them. You might only get about 180 to 200 kilowatts in. But Jesus, my God, are they fun?
Steve Davis: I
Joe Evans: I just, they’re just driving around.
I would drive. I’d buy mini God, they fun.
Steve Davis: I just had a picture of you sitting in a scale electric, uh, slot car when you were describing. That’s that’s what it feels. Yes. Um, philosophically though, what you are doing and what we’re contemplating doing is taking responsibility. For the government and our society lagging behind where technology is in paying attention [00:51:00] to sovereign capability with looking after ourselves for power isn’t
Joe Evans: power and, and energy.
Yeah. Uh, and I’d suggest, um, go to your library, get that book by Sol Griffith. Yeah. The Big Switch. I read that book after I’d done all this and went, my God, I’m already doing it, but his whole power or you can get it on eBooks. Yeah. And he’s got lots of good friends, famous, uh, sports personalities and um, TV personalities.
And each chapter is read by a different person
Steve Davis: ah,
Joe Evans: and, um, on a, on a different subject and oh, that, uh. Y and he’s worked in energy. He started off working on coal mine. So Griffith as an engineer, he worked for the USA, uh, government, but for, for a different government that were all for um, getting um, uh, going green and yeah, he’s got some absolutely [00:52:00] fantastic ideas for Australia.
Okay. And, and we should be doing it.
Steve Davis: Alright. Um, is the current hike in fuel prices slowing down traffic, wandering through cellar doors, et cetera, you noticing an impact yet?
Joe Evans: Um, I don’t think so. Okay. No, we are getting the same amount of people. Uh, last Sunday was rather, rather busy. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Okay. And on the wine front, let’s just get into it.
What is exciting on the Ballycroft horizon that we should be looking out for? And by the way, actually, lemme just say this. Only because I had this idea late in the week and it wasn’t going to have enough time for some wine to be delivered From your friends at pal’s, the PowerField Air Airport. And I have made a rule in our house that all travel needs to be essential.
I’m doing my bit to not use up resources. We don’t. That’s the only reason I’m not slurping some at the moment. I will, but just not today. [00:53:00] What should we look out for? What should be heading on our palette that you have made Joe Evans? Well,
Joe Evans: well it’s coming out of summer and so it’s getting into autumn.
Uh, my summertime drink is we make a, um, a lighter style montepuciano with no oak, which is fabulous with, um, pizza and cheese boards and security boards and lovely, uh, German MetWest. Um, but it’s m moving into autumn and I rather enjoy. A hundred percent matero and we picked our matero yesterday. A lot of people in the Brossa and McLaren Vale, they make a GSM.
Steve Davis: Yep.
Joe Evans: A Grenache Shiraz Matero blend. And the reason they do that, ’cause they wanna make a lovely wine that’s complete on your palate.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm. It’s
Joe Evans: Grenache is all the front palette. Shiraz is mid and a little bit of back palate, but Matero is the big back palate stuff. Not many people make a hundred percent Matero.
And I fell in love with a hundred percent Matero working at Rockford Wines. ’cause Rockford Wines was one of the first [00:54:00] wineries in Australia, let alone Barasa to make a GSM blend. And I absolutely loved the Matero bit. Yep. ’cause I’m a small wine maker and I make big wines. Now my matero isn’t overly tnic ’cause it gets all that tannin from the seeds, the harsh tannin.
I only de stem my grapes. I don’t crush them. So I end up with all whole berries.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Joe Evans: So, and um, and Mat has thick skin and I ferment it. Um, a little bit longer on skins for 12 days. I don’t put any sneaky Shiraz in it to fill up that mid pellet structure. It’s a hundred percent matero. It’s fruit driven. I put it, um, into dried older, shaved out oak for 28 months, which has a tiny little bit of vanilla to it.
And you, and then I age that bottle for two to three years for you. So I’m currently selling the 2021 and um, so it’s five years old, [00:55:00] so I’ve done half the aging for you. I personally probably wouldn’t drink it until 10 years old. And how many wineries out in this day and age are aging, uh, that red wine for you, you know, um, for you to take home to really enjoy.
Theme: Yeah,
Joe Evans: and I’ve always done that. Yeah. So my, so that matero, which is generally really big and most wineries will be putting out 20 fives now. You know, and it’s a little bit harsh. It needs time for that acid to soften and all that oak to soften. And I love a hundred percent Matero Ballycroft with generally, we have a local, the Grop Tavern happens to be the oldest family owned tavern in Australia, and they got famous for the best schnitzel in Australia, and they do a 300 gram beef schnitzel with mushroom sauce.
And I enjoy it immensely with a big glass, a bottle, not a glass, a bottle of, um, Ballycroft. Matero, [00:56:00]
Steve Davis: where’s that? The Grok Tavern?
Joe Evans: Yeah. At at the Grok Tavern. Yeah.
Steve Davis: So I wanna try and sit down with you and have one there, because I’m curious. I’ve never had a beef schnitzel That’s tender, that’s why I always go chicken.
But they do, they do it well.
Joe Evans: Oh, it, it’s, it’s not really real schnitzel. It’s more a piece of, uh, steak.
Steve Davis: Oh,
Joe Evans: it’s this thick double crumbed. Oh my God. It’s good.
Steve Davis: Okay, so the matero, look at where, where do we find, just buy the website. Buy from your website. It’s the best option.
Joe Evans: Yeah. Yeah. We, we are so small, we hardly sell any wine to any bottle shops.
Yep. Anywhere. Uh, you find a little bit in restaurants and cafes, but not much. You buy direct Ballycroft.com
Steve Davis: and,
Joe Evans: and it’ll lead you, lead you to our, um, very famous small berry Shiraz, French or American. And then you’ve got an exceptional Cabernet and, and a little bit different, a diff. Which is dark and, um, lovely and goes really well with, [00:57:00] um, venison and quail and a and a, you know, an age steak, you know, something a little bit stronger.
Steve Davis: I, I love Jiff. It, I think it’s my favorite of the, the grape varieties. But you haven’t mentioned something that you talked about in February on your socials, your small berry Shiraz Pressings 2022. Yes,
Joe Evans: I did. Yeah.
Steve Davis: What’s the, what’s the nature of that? What’s, what’s the,
Joe Evans: oh, well, that, that’s, that’s a bit, bit of a special one.
I, I didn’t, um, I didn’t mention that because sometimes it’s out of a lot of, uh, people’s, um, uh, price range and with them trying to save their money and have enough money for petrol. But if you’ve got, uh, a big birthday coming up or an anniversary and you, if you have a partner that really likes Shiraz, we make a wine out of just our pressings.
So that’s when you ferment the wine for. 10, 12, 14 days. And then, then you have to press all those grapes to get all the juice out. Yeah. So the pressing has more color, more flavor, more [00:58:00] tannin. And I put, um, that special bit of pressings, about 300 liters from two presses into a brand new oat barrel for 28 months.
And, um, it’s, uh, has a little bit more color, a little, a little bit more alcohol. And it’s about 15.4% alcohol. And, but it’s smooth as well. It’s, it’s big and smooth at the same time.
Caitlin Davis: Oh.
Joe Evans: And it’s just exceptional. And, and this brand new oat barrel wasn’t toasted. See, a lot of wine makers buy new barrels and they light toast, medium toast, and there’s no kind of toasty flavor or charcoal flavor.
In peering fruit. ’cause I like fruit driven wine, not oak driven. Yeah. And this is, it’s a 22, we only made 400 bottles.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Joe Evans: If you are interested in one of those, I’ve already sold 200 bottles and I only released it, um, a month ago. And, and I must admit, um, I’ve probably [00:59:00] drunk, you know, a dozen of them, so if you don’t have, there won’t be any less.
Steve Davis: And I noticed on your Facebook page you had people begging to have their sale approved of it too. So that’s a special occasion one. Alright. Joe Evans. Wow. Thank you for sharing so generously with what you have done off your own bat. Uh, we really appreciate, and I think it’s the most timely topic for many people to discuss at the moment.
Ballycroft.com is the website. The link will be in the show notes as our mutual friend Raf Hatik would say, sensational. That’s the word that sums you up. Thank you.
Joe Evans: Thank you very much and, and enjoy your day people and yeah. Uh, uh, get onto it. And because this petrol, it’s the petrol problem’s not gonna go away.
It’s just going to get worse. Yeah. If you don’t have control of it, um, have control of your own energy. It’s a good feeling.[01:00:00]
Theme: And now it’s time for the musical pilgrimage.
Steve Davis: In the musical pilgrimage, we are reflecting on the state of terror that the world is under at the moment. It was interesting through the week, John Schumann, who’s a friend of the program, put out a post reflecting on the notion of Australian servicemen and women being called upon to go to this war against Iran.
And the post I saw was him saying he’s taken that post down because it unleashed. There were some people, he said who got what he was trying to convey, others who understood it, but had different opinions, which is fine. But he got piled on by people telling him to bugger off, you’re a singer, you’re a songwriter.
You’ve got no business saying this sort of stuff. And I thought what he said was pertinent. He said, [01:01:00] excuse me. But the very role of a singer-songwriter is to reflect on the state of the world. You know, whether it’s your personal heart in, in the form of love song, or reflecting on society. That’s the role of a singer songwriter, uh, to which I say, here, here we need them.
I mean, uh, you think of your Bob Dylans and other singers who have affected change or brought people together. That’s what they do. A red gum. Uh. Had many songs drawing a fine focus on some of the hypocrisies in society. But for this song, it wasn’t me attempting to do that. But just reflecting on the fact that you can have an orange colored president in America.
Who is taciturn at best, deciding one day. Yep. Let’s go for it and send in all the, the bombs and the armaments and then [01:02:00] afterwards be dismissive of what’s going on. And, oh, you know, I, I think the great cartoon is, uh, Trump standing next to a table with a big tablecloth and all the fine China and cutlery and everything, and he yanks it away and makes a mess and says, oh, can someone else clean this up?
The analogy of this cartoonist was this is what’s going on in a round at the moment where it impacts us directly. Apart from caring for humans who are being blown to smither rains is in the cost of living. We are all finding it more expensive to get around and nervous about lack of supply. Our primary producers.
Uh, we are hearing, uh, struggling to get the diesel they need to grow the darn food that we need to eat. And then you’ve got freight companies who need to get that product, uh, from paddock to plate or to processing plant on, on the way through. [01:03:00] And so it is a sense of turmoil. The, the reflection in this song, I’ll just read you the first verse.
We are blowing ourselves to pieces, breaking things up again, and little people pay the prices on behalf of those angry men. It’s me reflecting on the fact that this is sadly the plight of being a human in this, on this planet. There’s always the threat of this sort of thing. Destabilizing. We had to have a pretty good run in Australia of being cushioned from much of the excesses of violence and, uh, anxiety that the world many parts of the world live with.
And in recording, talking about marketing podcasts with David Oldie, last week I uncovered a quote [01:04:00] of a, a, a, a speech that was delivered by CS Lewis, the author CS Lewis in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War. Everyone there would’ve had vivid memories of the Great War, the First World War, and just the way it obliterated humankind in the big sausage machine of destruction.
And so people were rightly. Anxious and despairing of what’s about to happen. I’m just gonna read you the first couple of paragraphs of his, uh, talk because it’s as timely now as it would’ve been back then, and I think this would’ve been timely at any point anywhere. Here’s what CS Lewis said, the war creates no absolutely new situation.
It simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a [01:05:00] precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men and women had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.
We are mistaken when we compare war with normal life. Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the 19th century, turn out on closer inspection to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, and emergencies. I really think CCS Lewis has something to say there, just to remind us that outside of our insulated bubble, the world is a bit closer to, um, Hobbs view of the state of nature where life is nasty, brutish, [01:06:00] and short.
I feel that it is close to that for many people, and yes, we’d much rather us all aspire to live in a higher echelon of safety, but there is this base aspect to humankind that rears its head. Constantly, and we are all very well aware of that at the moment. So it’s with that as backdrop. Here’s my reflection on the state of the world.
My lyrics, uh, brought to life through my virtual session band, the Virtuosos, and I hope there’s a singer performer out there who is keen to take this song on at some time and make it their own. But here is Steve Davis and the virtual osos. With another bloody year,
Steve Davis & The Virtualosos: we are blowing ourselves to pieces, bringing things up again, and little people pay the prices on behalf of those [01:07:00] angry men.
These old showman shout their speeches, sending the young, they never fired them on the,
what the hell is going on? Write, but these fools fight for
and all another bloody year.
Now there are kids learning how to swim, some learning how to ride, but these cowards and their whims means they’ll soon be taught to fight other boxes where we house our [01:08:00] lives worth all the ones who die. As we a four wheel drives, will we take time to wonder why?
What the hell is going on? I need to write.
In fear, they bruise the risk all for another bloody. What is it all for? Do we think about life? Do we just reach for more? Do we claim its, look at us from space. We’re a pale blue in join [01:09:00] time for
there is nothing that is worth all this, these evil lords of death. So how many more of us must fall before they draw their final breath? There are many more of us than them with lessons we could give. All of us should live more simply so that others might simply live.
What the hell?
[01:10:00] What
Steve Davis: Steve Davis and the virtuosos another bloody year. And that’s another bloody episode done as well. Thank you very much to listening into this. Thank you Joe Evans for your foresight and your generosity of sharing this amid, you know, a busy day at the vineyard where you are, you’ve got, uh, grapes being pressed and, and the whole wine making process underway.
Until next time, it’s good night for me, Steve Davis. Goodnight, Dawn.
AJ Davis: The Adelaide Show Podcast is produced by my dad, Steve Davis. If you want to start a podcast or get some help producing creative content, talk to him. Visit steve davis.com au. Thanks, aj. I’m Caitlyn Davis, and I agree with everything my sister said, but there’s one more thing to say.
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, [01:11:00] please leave a rating or a review ’cause that will make my dad really happy. Oh, and one more thing. If you really, really liked it, please help a friend put the Adelaide Show on their phone. Thanks for listening.
Buzz Buzz.
Theme: Bad lady.
The other lady who.