First Fruit - Vintage 2009 begins...

It all starts with some beautiful fruit. Ripe, clean, handharvested. A touch over 24 brix, acidity around 6.5 g/L and pH of 3.4

Weighed, then gently tipped into the conveyor.....

Up the Conveyor into the Destemmer, with the open-top fermenter in place below...

No pumping here. The destemmed berries fall directly into the fermenter.

Each fermenter holds around 1.5 tonnes of fruit.

A little sulphur for health and to hold off the wild yeasts for a few days while a pre-ferment maceration takes place (good for colour extraction).

Bubbling Barrels

Springtime has arrived (sort of) in Canterbury and that means the cellar is starting to warm up a little. All our Pinot Noir will now start its secondary fermentation, the Malolactic fermentation. As the wine warms up the natural bacteria in the wine start eating up all the Malic acid and converting it into Lactic acid. Malic acid is the green apple tasting type that isnt really welcome in Pinot Noir (or, in any great amount, in my whites either for that matter).

Just going back a step, the malic acid in each berry is respired out of the berry during the season with the higher the temperature meaning the more Malic is respired. So in cooler climate winegrowing regions the berry tends to retain more malic acidity, which comes across as green and tart. Unlike the other major acid in grapes, tartaric acid, which is more citric and ripe tasting.

Anyway, so in Pinot Noir (and most reds) we try to lose that Malic by having the bugs turn it into the softer, rounder Lactic acid. For every 1g/L of Malic that is consumed, 0.5g/L of Lactic are produced. This can occur naturally or you can add freeze-dried bacteria to the wine to do the job. Neither of them can handle cold wine or too much sulphur so care is needed.

Should take a few weeks and then I can finally add some SO2 to the wine for the remainder of its life in barrel.

August in the Winery...

Vintage 2008 saw approximately 50 tonnes of Pinot Noir harvested from our vineyards in Waipara and Central Otago. This has translated into 140 barrels of wine. At this stage of the year the wine is in maturation mode and is awaiting warmer temperatures in the winery so that the secondary fermentation, the Malolactic ferment, can begin. Ideally the temperature for Malo needs to be in the 18-22C range but below this barrels do tend to kick off on their own. MLF can be innoculated with commercial bacteria but traditionally was left to start under its own steam in the spring following vintage. This is the approach we are using.

In the middle of the above photo you just might be able to make out my temp/humidity gauge sitting on top of a barrel. One reason I need to monitor these levels is to make sure the evaporation from the barrels doesnt get too high. Over the course of a year you might expect to lose around 2-5% to the 'angels share'.

As a result of this loss I need to top-up all the barrels on a regular basis. At this stage of its like each barrel of wine, whilst waiting for MLF to complete, is not protected from oxidation and bacteria by sulphur dioxide so they need to be kept as full as possible to elimate any ullage.