CYCLING THROUGH THE VINEYARDS
How would you like to go cycling through vineyards? It sounds picturesque, a lot of fun and a great way to enjoy yourself, doesn't it? There's another type of vineyard cycling that we are familiar with, but you have to be very fit because it's long and arduous. The entire trip takes a year!
Winter in the vines with vines ready for pruning
Yes, the annual vineyard cycle starts when autumn fades into winter after the last grapes are harvested and the golden leaves have finally dropped, leaving only the naked vines, like so many skeletal hands holding bony fingers to the sky. Winter is the busiest time in the vineyard, each vine has to be carefully pruned to lay down the right canes and number of buds for the coming season's crop. Then the unwanted canes have to be pulled out of the wire trellis, a vigorously energetic job, which is just the thing for a frosty morning. Even if we don't enjoy Jack Frost's icy grip the vines do, as it helps them rest and kills off pests. The canes have to be wrapped and firmly tied to the wires to stabilise them, as they will have a load of grapes to carry the following summer. The great mass of prunings lying between the rows has to be disposed of. All of this takes 3 or 4 months and we usually struggle to get it completed before the vines spring to life once more in the spring.
The weather warms and the buds swell. About mid-September, in our neck of the woods, they start to burst and the tips of green leaves emerge. This magical process, so slow to begin, suddenly explodes and green shoots appear everywhere. It is a signal for a further flurry of work as unwanted growth is removed, remaining shoots are trained upwards, spraying commences, and mowing between the rows is required. It is also a time to encourage vine health by applying compost. While toiling with backs bent we need to keep a wary eye on the weather as a cold snap necessitates sleepless nights frost fighting. A single frost can kill all of the young shoots, so that the entire potential crop is lost, making the complete year's work in vain.
Left: The first leaves appear, Right: Grapes in Flower
In late spring and early summer we pray for good weather as the vineyard is pungent with the aroma of grape flowers. It's a beautifully, heady, sweet aroma that can tell you flowering has started, even before you have seen it. Grapes are somewhat indecent, clever little creatures and fertilise themselves, without needing the help of insects. But as we all know, cold is not conducive to good sex and grape vines agree. Cool or wet weather over flowering interferes with the process and leads to a small crop of grapes 'setting'.
As the shoots continue to grow during summer work carries on unabated. The greenery needs to be trained in the wire trellises and clipped so that the shoots are held vertical, rather than flopping over and causing shading. Unwanted shoots have to be individually removed and the whole canopy trimmed to allow light to penetrate. Leaves may need to be separately removed from around bunches to aid ripening and lower humidity, which can cause disease. Usually the crop has to be reduced, a time consuming and labour intensive job. All the while the grass needs mowing and constant monitoring for diseases and soil moisture is required. January is perhaps the most relaxed time, while waiting for the small hard green berries to fill out, soften and begin ripening. When the first tinges of red appear in the black grape varieties (veraison) it is a time of excitement, but also of concern. If it is delayed, the grapes will struggle to achieve optimal ripeness. Red also means raid. It is a signal for birds to attack. Crop protection takes many forms, including gas guns, scarecrows, self launching hawk kites, screeching noises, motor-bikes and the like. We go for the quieter option and net everything, but it is a huge effort to get these on.
Summer foliage
Finally, the time we have all been waiting for, autumn. Unless we get this bit right the whole year's work will be wasted. We regularly monitor the grapes state of ripeness and health. Sunshine is the order of the day as cold leads to poor ripening and wet conditions can cause rot. We are wanting to pick at just the right moment when flavours are at their best and the balance of natural sugars and acids is perfect. It requires a lot of sample collecting and laboratory analysis, but the most important part needs no equipment, solely an experienced nose and palate. It is the aromas and flavours that are really vital!
Picking in autumn
Harvest or vendage can be a frantic time. Different varieties ripen at different times and you have to be ready to pick each one when it is at its best. You also need good weather to pick and it has to be coordinated with the winery, which can't handle all the grapes at once. While the majority of the vendage is completed in about 6 weeks, it can spread out over 8-10, particularly if there are grapes left out to make late harvest dessert wine styles. During the autumn, frost fighting is also sometimes required as an early one can cause loss of leaves and stop ripening.
When the vintage is finished the vineyard and equipment need tidying before the pruning starts. The vineyard cycle has come to an end and, hopefully, it has been successful. But there are cycles and cycles. While it is the end of the vineyard one it is only the beginning of another which is commencing in the winery and will also take a year to complete.
That, however, is another story...
A SORT OF A TABLE
Question: What is a sorting table? Answer: A sort of a table that allows sorting.
To be more precise it's a piece of equipment on which you lay out grapes and remove any undesirable material, such as leaves or twigs, and fruit that is less than perfect. To be most efficient, such fruit should gradually travel along the table, allowing it to be inspected, spread out and worked on. What is left on the surface continues to the end, eventually ending up in a winemaking vat. In the case of red wines, stems are usually removed before vatting.
The vintage team at the sorting table while grapes are gradually loaded at one end
Most producers don't bother with a sorting table, so that all of the fruit which arrives at the winery ends up as wine. While it is very time consuming, labour-intensive, finicky work, we choose to use such a device because it enhances the quality of the end product. It gives us 2 opportunities to choose our fruit, once in the vineyard when picking and a second time in the winery. We have up to 8 people at one time doing this work. Some tables use mechanical means to propel the fruit, but we prefer a sloping surface and gently slide the fruit along, letting gravity assist us. We hope you think the result justifies all the work.
2004 A VINTAGE OF EXTREMES
Heard about the man who had the upper part of his body in the fridge and the lower part in the oven ? A statistician reported that his average body temperature was normal!
On this basis the 2004 vintage, would no doubt qualify as an average one, although it was a season of extremes. Spring was early and warm weather over flowering ensured a good set of fruit on the vines. January was exceptionally hot with many days in the high 30's. On each of the first 4 days in January it was over 40º C in the shade. At the end of that month we thought we were in for the earliest vintage ever. Then we came up against February. It was one of the coolest on record in Waipara. At the end of that month we were beginning to doubt whether we would ever get our fruit ripe. There followed 4 months of warm, dry weather which ensured excellent maturity in all varieties. We are delighted with the results of our 'average' (well almost) season but you must be the final judge.
THE VINOUS ITINERANTS
Making wine in small batches using traditional winemaking techniques ' who would bother? It's just a lot of hard work.
We agree that it's not easy but we can be bothered. It does, however, mean that at vintage our winery is very busy and needs a lot of input from experienced like-minded people. Each year as the first grapes roll into the winery the itinerants begin to appear. They are winemakers from other parts of the world who come to work, both sharing and gaining experience. Helping us for the 2004 vintage we had 2 French men ' Pierre and Nicolas, a French woman Magali, an Austrian, Wolfgang, and an Australian, David. They joined our resident cellar team of Cleighton, Rhoda and Duncan. The whole operation was overseen by Matthew and Lynnette. For many weeks on end this group rubbed shoulder to shoulder, working extraordinarily long hours and eating and drinking together. As the fermentation in the vats died down and the last grapes were pressed, the itinerants gradually slipped away to carry on with their lives elsewhere. We know it was a lot of very hard work and we are enormously appreciative. We hope you will be too once you have tried the results of their efforts.
A SPRIG OF SPRING IN THE KITCHEN
We love the excitement of spring. Not only does the vineyard suddenly become verdant with new growth, but our garden springs to life bringing an array of fresh new flavours. We pluck sprigs of succulent herbs only minutes before we use them in our restaurant. Speaking of which, make sure you sample our tantalisingly tasty spring menu put together by our talented chef James Stapley. The emphasis is on serious cuisine using fresh seasonal produce served in a relaxed style.
FROM THE PRESCRIPTION PAD
I would like to ask you a question. What do you think about MMP - is it good? It was one I had thrown at me recently when asked to take part in an opinion poll. I answered that I thought it was extremely important and that understanding it had been a great benefit to the wine industry. After a little confusion it transpired that the fatuous young interviewer was referring to some outlandish system of voting. I declined to communicate any further on the grounds that political systems come and go but the real MMP (4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one) will be around for ever.
But let me explain. Having a medical background means that organic chemistry has never held any terror for me, but I will try to be simple. Shortly after Kiwi sauvignon blancs began to cause a stir with their very expressive aromas and flavours, wine scientists from other countries tried to work out why they were so distinctive. They came up with the idea that it resulted from the group of compounds called methoxypyrazines. End of story. These are definitely present in sauvignon blanc and give rather herbaceous aromas and flavours, a little like cut grass, green peppers and the like. It was seen as scientific evidence to support the notion that sauvignon blanc is a rather simple one dimensional style of wine.
Now, all of us sauvignon blanc lovers know that this is far from the truth. Sauvignon blanc has a huge spectrum of aromas and flavours, that do not fit those descriptors , which tend to dominate only in unripe fruit. What about the gooseberry, citrus fruits, passionfruit, guava and peach, not to mention the smoky, gamey and truffle-like characters which appear in some wines with age? Thanks to further work, including some from the University of Bordeaux, it is known that the situation is much more involved and interesting. Which brings me back to MMP, or to be more exact 4MMP. This is one of a group of several highly aromatic and flavoursome compounds called thiols, which are present in sauvignon blanc wine. Different thiols have distinctive characters reminiscent of flowers, passionfruit, guava and citrus fruits, including grapefruit, to mention just a few. The fascinating thing about thiols is that unlike the compounds which give more 'simple' aromas and flavours, such as Muscat, they are not present in the grapes and can not be detected by smelling the grape juice. They are released during fermentation into wine by the action of yeasts splitting apart naturally occurring compounds containing sulphur. They can, however, be tasted in grape juice because chemical substances called enzymes in saliva, also release them. This is why we always determine when to pick our sauvignon blanc by day after day tasting the berries until the flavours are just those we want.
As it so happens different types of yeasts will release quite different amounts of the various thiols from the same grape juice so the character of the eventual wine depends on which yeast is used. Some 'wild' yeasts, which are found occurring naturally on grapes, produce a more complex and better result than most cultured yeasts. It is a very vineyard-specific thing. We like what our own yeasts do and have for some years been using wild ferment for our sauvignon semillon blend. Research has also shown that formation of thiols exposes the sulphur containing part of the molecule which results in a gamey 'funkiness' in the wine. Some winemakers do not like this and treat their wine to remove it. In doing so, however, they remove quite a lot of naturally occurring beneficial thiols.
A point to note is that although these thiols are particularly prominent in sauvignon blanc they can also be found in wines made from some other grape varieties, such as riesling and gewürztraminer. It explains the overlap in aroma and flavour profiles that sometimes occur in totally different types of wine. In addition, many of these thiols are found in other fruits, the names of which wine writers have been using for years to describe wines. For example, passionfruit and guava both contain them.
Well, it turns out that far from being a simple wine, sauvignon blanc is enormously complex and what we know about it is only a start. Current evidence suggests that there are many other compounds involved. If it's all too complicated and exhausting don't worry. Relax and enjoy a glass. That's the most important thing.
Cheers, Ivan Donaldson
