HARVESTING GREEN GRAPES - WE DO IT!
Who in their right mind would harvest green grapes? We would and do. In late summer and early autumn our vineyard team keep their secateurs in constant motion with this activity. The Pegasus Bay philosophy has always been to make wine out of grapes that are optimally ripe so you could be forgiven for thinking that we have suffered an acute attack of madness.
Green harvest is the viticultural term given to removing excess crop before it is ripe in order to allow the vines to concentrate their resources on the bunches left behind. The New Zealand wine industry, like those in a number of countries, went through a phase in the 1980's when it believed that large crops could be ripened quite well so long as the vines had adequate numbers of leaves which were exposed to the sun. Sunlight on the leaves, by the process of photosynthesis, produces the building blocks needed to cause ripening and these are then pumped into the berries. When you measure ripeness in terms of sugar and acid levels in the berries, it turns out to be true. Vines can handle large crops. What this ignores, however, is concentration. Experience has shown that concentration in the ensuing wines, in terms of flavour, body and weight, is less when the vines have too much crop. In other words, the wines are more dilute and watery. That's not our style. Hence we green harvest. The crop on a vine depends how many buds you have left after winter pruning and also on the weather over the flowering period. Cold weather means few berries "set" and warm weather promotes a big crop. It is difficult to get it absolutely correct so most vineyards leave the right number of buds for average flowering weather, but then every so often Mother Nature is excessively kind and produces a bumper crop. We like to start by removing half of the excess crop before any ripeness has started and come back for a second go during veraison. This is the time when grapes soften and the reds start to get colour. At this stage we are selective and remove any bunches, or parts of them, that are lacking in maturity, so that it enhances the quality of what is left.
But harvest is the wrong word. The green grapes end up being thrown on the ground. Assessing the amount of crop, and hence potential money, lying on the earth after the team has passed through is enough to make the vineyard owner (and accountant) weep. For this reason many wineries are not into green harvest, but we believe this shows. Perhaps their owners are as crazy as us!
WHAT A PACKAGE
You may recall that in a previous newsletter we mentioned that unlike a lot of wineries, we do our own bottling and packaging of wine. Bottling can be hard on wine and may reduce its quality. When you put in a huge effort in the vineyard and winery in order to make the best wine that you can, it doesn't make a lot of sense to let somebody else and their machine loose on it. So, at the end of last year we took delivery of a brand new complete bottling and packaging line from Europe. Expensive? Yes! But it is worth it.
This machine automatically washes the bottles. Even although we are using new bottles they may contain particles of glass, dust or dirt and the washing ensures they are clean. The machine then fills the bottle with an inert gas to remove all oxygen. Unless this is done the wine can become oxygenated as it enters the bottle and this lessens aroma and flavour, as well as leading to premature aging.
Next the bottle is gently filled with wine. By filled we mean exactly that. Right up to the top of the bottle. While this may sound fine it does not leave any room for a cork to be inserted. You also need to have a layer of gas between the wine and the closure to allow for expansion and contraction of the wine with variations in temperature. If you don't have this the cork will be pushed out if the bottle warms up or if you have a screw cap, which can't be pushed off, the bottle may burst. So what does this machine do? It removes the excess liquid with a tube and at the same time fills, with inert gas, the space it creates in the neck of the bottle to make certain oxygen does not sneak back in. It sounds strange, doesn't it? Why overfill a bottle and then remove some liquid to get the correct amount? The reason is quite simple. It is much more accurate to do this than to try to put exactly the correct amount in each bottle. It ensures that the space between the top of the wine and the closure, which is critical, is exactly the same in each bottle.Now, liquid is incompressible so if you should just put a cork into such a filled bottle the gas in the top suddenly gets compressd and tends to push the cork back out. Solution? To suddenly suck the cork's volume of gas out of the top of the bottle at the moment the cork is pushed in. Simple isn't it? This new machine, for the first time, also allows us to have the option of using screw caps.
In spite of the machine costing us an arm and a leg, we think you're worth it. We want to deliver our wine to you in the best possible condition so that you can enjoy it even more!
EXPERIENCE NEW YORK
Fancy pouring wine to thousands of enthusiastic New Yorkers who have paid for the experience? "It's exciting and it's fun" reports Edward Donaldson, "but it is also hard work".
Towards the end of last year our marketing manager poured Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir at the New York Wine Experience. This annual event is run by the prestigious American Wine Spectator magazine and only selected wineries can take part. Only a handful of New Zealand producers have been there and we felt privileged to be involved. The event is held over a weekend when wine enthusiasts, restaurateurs and wine trade throng the venue eagerly seeking out top drops.
Edward combined this trip with a 2 month stint around our export markets, including other parts of the US, Canada, Europe, UK, Asia and Australia. While it sounds a great job, let us assure you it is a hell of a lot of work and very exhausting.
IN PRAISE OF FINE WINE & FOOD
Life tends to have a few brickbats, so it's nice to receive unsolicited bouquets and we have had quite a few of recent times. One that came totally out of the blue was a review about the Pegasus Bay Restaurant in The Press. The reviewer, incognito at the time of the visit chose words and phrases like …
...it's the attention to detail that impresses with Pegasus Bay, ……… cooked to pink perfection, it was the best cooked salmon he had ever had, ……. Delicious and delovely - a class act to the bitter end (coffee and bitter chocolates), …… Pegasus Bay is the place to go when you want a quality, fine-dining lunch to go with your wine, - divine is not the word, well, maybe it is.
Phew! After all that I guess you could say the reviewer found it immensely tolerable.
Congratulations to Adam, James and Taka in the kitchen and Belinda, Tim and Heike on front of house who have done us proud. Remember the menu changes regularly and emphasises fresh seasonal ingredients. We will remain open throughout the year, including over the winter. Pamper yourself with a visit to sample the wine and food. If you want a meal it is best to reserve on 03 3146869 to make certain we have room. We look forward to seeing you.
FROM THE PRESCRIPTION PAD
Wine and health - having had a foot in both camps for many years it's a topic in which I am very interested. Now, as you are reading this article I don't have to be a professor of logic to work out that it is highly likely you are a wine drinker and hence the subject should be of more than academic interest to you. Hence, I should share a few thoughts which are based on a scientific editorial on the topic that I was recently invited to write by an overseas medical journal. As it is hot off the press, the information is right up to date.
Special health and medicinal benefits were attributed to wine from the time of classical Greece until the mid 1800's when, with the advent of modern scientific medicine, such crazy notions were debunked. Over the last 30 years, however, there have been many studies which have shown that mild to moderate alcohol intake has a positive effect on health. These have established the concept of the U- or J-shaped mortality curve in which mild to moderate drinking results in a decreased death rate compared with teetotallers, only to rise again with heavy drinking. The magnitude of this benefit of light and moderate alcohol intake is very significant, with heart attacks and strokes, due to blocked blood vessels, being reduced in frequency by 1/3 to 1/2. There is evidence to suggest that the way in which this works is through changes in blood fats, including cholesterol, and lessening the natural tendency of blood to clot.
Who drinks pure alcohol? Nobody, unless they're imbibing meths on skid row. People like you and I consume drinks which contain alcohol, yet most of the above studies have focussed on alcohol alone, ignoring the rest of the beverage. More recently, studies have emerged suggesting all alcoholic drinks were not created equal. Initially this was proposed by groups highlighting the French paradox. This is the fact that the rate of death from cardiovascular disease is low in France, in spite of a high intake of cholesterol and related fats, and there is scientific evidence suggesting this might result from that well known French habit of having the odd glass of wine. There are now a number of reports suggesting wine has beneficial effects not shared by other alcoholic beverages, including a big Danish study, which compared non-drinking with various levels of drinking up to 3-5 drinks a day. Increasing wine intake was associated with a steady fall in death rate, beer had no effect and spirits, at this upper level of consumption, were associated with an increased mortality.
Even the most famous vineyard can not produce the same wine year in and year out, unlike spirits, which can be identically manufactured to a recipe. This is because wine is a complex and imperfectly understood soup of constituents, while spirits are relatively simple and consist mostly of alcohol. Scientific attempts to explain the additional beneficial effects of wine over other forms of alcohol have focussed almost exclusively on a group of natural compounds called phenolics. These give red wines their colour and their drying tannic structure. This has lead to the popular notion that red wines are better for health than white. No-one, however, has been able to show this is the case and what studies there are, suggest that white and red wine are equally effective in preventing heart attack. White wines do have significant amounts of phenolics and many red wine phenolics are probably only poorly absorbed by the gut. Recent studies by New Zealand doctors have shown that both white and red wine seem capable of improving the physiological function of blood vessels and this does not seem to be due to either their alcoholic content or measurable changes in blood phenolics levels. Remember, there are many other substances in wine which could explain these findings.
But health consists of more than just avoiding heart attacks and strokes. A number of other health related benefits have been reported with mild to moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages, particularly wine. These include a reduced incidence of dementia, a reduction in the frequency of diabetes, improvement in bone structure in elderly women, better lung function, lessening in the severity of asthma and protection against stomach ulcers, to mention just a few.
The frequency of some cancers, particularly those of the breast and bowel, may be increased by drinking, whereas other may actually be diminished. A clear picture has not emerged, but in a study of 34,000 middle aged French men, those who imbibed, 77% of whom drank wine, had a 20% reduction in the risk of cancer compared with non-drinkers.
While the bulk of evidence suggests mild to moderate drinking, particularly of wine, is good for your health, there is a catch. Recent studies show that wine drinkers are more intelligent, better educated, have better jobs, are richer, eat better diets, have more physical activity, are not as fat and have fewer psychiatric problems than beer and spirit drinkers. Being a wine drinker, you probably knew this already! The problem is, however, that each of these factors by themselves tend to be associated with better health and reduced likelihood of early death. It thus makes it uncertain whether these could be the reason why wine drinkers are better off than others, rather than the wine itself. This new information will no doubt send medical researchers scuttling back to the drawing board to see whether they can sort out this conundrum. In the meantime I suggest you relax back and enjoy a glass of wine, so long as it is in moderation!
Cheers, Ivan Donaldson
