How much is out there ??

With fruit set in the vineyard practically over its time to get a feel for how much crop is out there. It was warm and fine throughout the fruit-set period so its likely each vine will be carrying a reasonable sized crop. This initial crop estimation is a general guideline as to whether we need to drop any fruit at this stage.

Usually growers will randomly select a number of vines through the vineyard, count the number of clusters per vine, apply a historical bunch weight average, add a dose of gut instinct and then arrive at an approximate yield.

We expect each vine to carry not more than 2kg of fruit through to harvest. At our average row spacings of 2 x 1.5 this should equate to around 5 tonnes/hectare - a figure in line with most quality conscious vineyards and will also give a juice yield equal to legal limits in France for Grand Cru vineyards.

On a vine spacing of 1.5m each vine will have approximately 10-15 shoots each supporting 2 bunches of fruit. Depending on the varietal we can expect the average weight of each bunch to be around 100g. Growers will keep annual bunch weight data to help predict yield more accurately. And so we arrive, after thinning and other canopy management techniques, at something around 2kg/vine.

What we don't want is a repeat of 2008 when everyone everywhere seemed to be caught out by larger than average berry sizes which resulted in huge crops and overflows in wineries all over the place. Not good for the wine quality and ultimately the image of NZ wine abroad.

Where in the world is......Brennan Vineyards

Driving out of Queenstown towards Cromwell/Wanaka. The first Valley you come to is the Gibbston Valley, home of Bungy Jumping and a number of well known wineries - Peregrine, Chard Farm and Gibbston Valley to name a few. Just past Peregrine but not as far as Waitiri Creek, on the opposite side of the main highway, you will find the Brennan and OVO Vineyards. This is where we source our Central Otago Pinot Noir. Check out Google Earth for a broader view of the region.

The Gift of Flowers

News from Waipara over the last few days is that flowering has begun. In line with their geographical position, Marlborough is usually a little ahead of Waipara with Central Otago a little later than both of them. This is about normal for this stage of the season. Grapes are self-fertilising so once the flowers have open they rely on the weather to complete the job. And warm, fine and settled weather is forecast for the remainder of the week so this bodes well for a great fruit-set. Without any frost issues and with a good level of potential crop on the vine there will almost certainly have to be a reasonable amount of crop thinning done to ensure full ripeness for the fruit come harvest time.

Where on earth is...Williams Hill

Williams Hill - Waipara - Pinot Noir

Get yourself onto Google Earth and see where our vineyards are. Until I work out how to hyper link all the coordinates I will have to post them up here one by one. Plug in the coordinates from the map above and have a broader, better view.

"Like Vietnam in the bad old days"...

Just a wrap on the recent frost event that had up to 500 helicopters on standby around the country. TV3 News featured the story and you can view it here or read more here.

A week of warm settled weather has followed and it appears that, fingers crossed, the spring frost season may be over.

Next key event to look out for will be flowering or fruit-set. Warm temperatures here will ensure healthy crop volumes and give growers the option of deciding on how much fruit to retain through to harvest. Cooler temperatures can reduce and affect crop levels and, as happened in 2007, this may still be excellent for winemakers but will certainly not be welcomed (financially) by growers. Stay tuned...

Frosty Reception

At the tail end of last week a storm swept up the South Island brigning rain, sleet and snow to all areas. And it wasnt only the peloton in the Tour of Southland who were affected by the snow. Vineyards across the island were also struck by the freak weather.

In Central Otago the vineyards had helicopters on standby all mornings from Wednesday to Saturday. It was much the same across the rest of the island. Temperatures plummeted to 0C and below on all of those mornings, the lowest being -2.6C in our Gibbston Valley vineyard on Saturday. Newspapers reported that 500 helicopters were working in vineyards across the country that night. Check out the TV3 news video here.

I was up in Waipara on Friday night/Saturday morning with a helicopter on site. Temperatures in the vineyard went from 7C at midnight down to around 0C by 6am but soon warmed up with daybreak and the only thing lost was a nights sleep.

Helicopters are expensive to run. Depending on its size and the area of vineyard you want to protect, the hourly rate can be anything from $600-$3000. Which is enough to give any vineyard owner sleepless nights but is better than the stress of losing your entire crop (and hence income) in a single night.

You can read a little more in a newspaper report Here. The net result for Sandihurst is that we have lost our West Melton fruit - two good Riesling vineyards (potentially 20 tonnes) and our Pinot Gris (5 tonnes). Its disappointing but on the plus side, our vineyards in Waipara, Marlborough and Central have been unaffected. The forecast this week is for fine weather and surely this spells the end of the frost risk this year.

Springtime in Central

Heres a photo taken this morning in Queenstown, Central Otago. Springtime. Not that unusual but not exactly welcome either. No reported vineyard damage at this stage. Temperatures overnight got down as low as 0.8C and havent risen much over 5.0C all day. Brrrrrr.

Keeping an eye out

While we are always in contact with our growers in other regions its good to be able to keep a handle on the season generally just to get an idea of how things are going. Webcams and Vineyard Weather stations are an ideal way to do this from afar.

Regional Webcams

Central Otago - Lake Wanaka, Clyde, Alexandra, Queenstown

Weather Stations

These are from the excellent site harvest.com and have the added advantage of calaculating GDD as well as temperature, rainfall, wind and humidity.

Central Otago - Brennan location of our PinotNoir

Marlborough - St Lukes our Sauvignon Blanc vineyard.

Waipara - Huxley, Camshorn on the valley floor, Omihi to the north, or Muddy Water on the hillside.

Rain Radars

Elders and MetService have very good hourly radars that we can use to track bad weather.

Growth Industry

We can see the fruit ! Uniform growth and practically 2 bunches on every shoot. Next job in the vineyard will be to think about shoot thinning where things look a little crowded. Thinning helps limit the crop and open up the canopy to light and wind flow which helps ripening and to reduce disease pressure.

In a few weeks we will begin to see flowering and fruit-set take place. NZ's national weather bureau have just issued a prediction of a warmer and drier than average summer. Which would be great news but can they be trusted ?

Grape Expectations...

Its that time of year when we as a winery are out visiting our growers, taking a look at the vineyards to see how the current season has begun, and also reviewing the previous season - how the grapes were, things that could be improved from both sides and a look at the pricing structure.

With regards to pricing generally, it is amazing how random it all seems to be. Most people seem to plump for a figure somewhere near last years prices with a small increase factored in, with perhaps a premium added in cases where vineyards are perceived to have a high quality terroir or for grape varietals that are in high current demand. There seems to be very little knowledge of how those prices were first arrived at and little or no discussion about how they relate to the operating costs of a vineyard.

Most growers are paid by the tonne. Some also have an incremental scale based on ripeness or other such quality parameters. Another system not used often in NZ but which seems to approximate the current grape prices well is the 100 x bottle price formula. A few growers are involved in profit-sharing schemes with the wineries. Some wineries opt to lease the vineyard outright.

No doubt the Economists would tell us its all simple demand and supply - Pinot Noir often sells for twice the price of Riesling so growers shouldnt expect the same prices for their fruit despite the fact that all the good ones will spend exactly the same amount of time in the vineyard on both varietals.

Life isnt fair sometimes (if you grow/love Riesling!)

Growing reputation...

Much more interesting than watching paint dry, and faster too.

Cutting remarks...

Pruning, as I may have mentioned previously, is one of the tougher jobs in the vineyard. Faced with pruning as many as 20000 vines over a 2-3 month period in winter can be a real challenge. Sore backs, arms and wrists are all common ailments.

So despite the somewhat hefty pricetag, electric pruners such as the one above, can be a real lifesaver. The battery pack lasts at least a full day, they are light to hold and easy to use. In addition, a person pruning is generally able to prune more vines and be less physically affected by the end of it all.

The numbers game

Although there is, of course, no substitute for actually being in the vineyard to know whats going on its good to keep a handle on the seasonal statistics. We use information as shown by the graphs above to help us make better viticultural decisions.

These graphs are derived from an onsite weather station and can be viewed in realtime via the internet (harvest.com). They show a number of valuable stats - temperature, rainfall, windspeed and direction, humidity, soil moisture and leaf wetness. Knowing these figures can assist with spraying timing and frequencies, irrigation scheduling, seasonal GDD, and disease pressure for example.

The information can be graphed daily,weekly or monthly and is really useful to build up a picture of how the current season is progressing. In addition you can then build up a library of historical data which can also help with current decision making.

It might be a bit too small to see but from the graphs above it appears to be cold and wet. No pruning today then.

Vineyard Weeding

This great piece of equipment has been a revelation in our Crossroads vineyard. It is our mechanical weeder. Using it has meant the elimination of spraying for weeds chemically. It is mounted on the side of the tractor and basically works by cutting through the soil at a shallow depth to remove all weeds. The side blade turns the soil over.

This is great news for reduction in the use of chemicals on the land, especially in light if the NZ wine industries goal of 100% sustainable viticulture for all vineyards. Its also a great aid to the vine which doesnt have to compete with weeds for nutirents.

Great wine can only come from great fruit. Great fruit requires a high level of attention to detail in the vineyard. Tools like this go along way to acheiving that.

Meanwhile, out in the vineyard...

From the end of harvest (around early May) until the start of budburst (early April) the major job required in the vineyard is pruning. It is one of the most time consuming and therefore most expensive tasks in the vineyard calender. And theres no getting away from it - its just hard physical labour.

Most of our vineyards are pruned to 2 canes, each cane having 8-10 buds. The first task is to use the loppers to make the heavy cuts which eliminates most of the previous years wood. In the photo above Daryl Ashby, the vineyard manager for our Crossroads vineyard, is pulling out the cut wood.

From here the next pass through the vineyard will be to select the 2 spurs and the 2 canes which will tied down for the new season. Pruners will trim up each cane, tie it down to the wire and cut off any excess canes not required. Its time consuming and if the vineyard rows are longer than about 200 metres then it can be quite soul destroying for the pruners if they cant finish too many rows in a day.

And into the mix it is winter so it can be cold and miserable. No wonder the industry has labour shortage problems.

Feeling Gru-Ve...

Gruner Veltliner is being planted in Canterbury ! In a climate where Riesling excels, this is a really exciting development. GV has certainly taken off around the world in the last few years and there is fledgling interest here in NZ too. When released, the Sandihurst Gruner Veltliner will certainly be amongst the first.

GV is a variety often made full bodied and dry with a firm mineral backbone. Citrus/peach flavours are common as well as its trademark peppery characteristic. The wines usually are a naturally high acid structure and, like Riesling, have a great ability to age, developing intriguing petrol and honeycomb notes as it does.

If you havent tried a Gruner before then Terry Thiese (one of the US's more well known and passionate importers of German and Austrian wine) sums it up well

“If sauvignon blanc and viognier had a filthy weekend, and their evil
spawn was loosed upon the world, grüner would be the result”

Vineyard Series - Georges Road, Waipara

This is the first in a series of posts profiling our contracted vineyards. Georges Road Vineyard is in Waipara, which is about 45 minutes north of Christchurch. The Waipara Valley region is one of the countries fastest growing viticultural areas and has the climate and soils well suited to quality Riesling and Pinot Noir. There are around 80 vineyards in the region.

The Georges Road Vineyard is located on the western side of the valley where the soils are light, free draining and largely of gravel and loam. The photo above shows the Riesling block. There are 12000 vines here, planted in two stages in 2006 and 2007. Largely frost free due to the vineyard sloping away towards the Waipara River. Planted in the Geisenheim clones are 198 and 239 on 101-14 and 3309 rootstock. Row spacing is 2m and vine spacing is 1.5m with 10% of the vineyard at 1.0m. North-South row orientation and trained to VSP trellis.

This is our newest vineyard and we will be harvesting for the first time here next year. For all our vineyards the fruit is hand harvested into small 10kg bins and transported to our winery here in West Melton.

Riesling is a naturally vigorous and high cropping grape. In order to get the best out of it I believe it needs to be afforded the same attention and care that we give Pinot Noir - ie: intensive vine management and lower crop levels. Its also the ultimate in terroir grapes , in expressing where it comes from, so more wineries in this country should be encouraged to make more single vineyard wines. It can only be good for everyone.