Eeek, snow...

Heres a photo of Queenstown taken early this morning. Snow on the hills! Im waiting to hear from our grower in Gibbston about what, if any, effect this had had on the vines. Weather station monitors had the temperature at 0C for most of the night. With grapes 3 weeks + from ripening, this is a little worrying. Stay tuned.

The Punch Down...

When the Pinot ferments are in full swing the gas (CO2) created by the yeasts pushes all the skins to the surface of the fermenter. This creates a crust or cap which needs to be punched down back into the liquid 4-5-6 times a day. This is important because the skins are where the extraction of wine phenolics, the colour and the tannin, comes from. And if you were to let them dry out on top then that exposes the fermenter to bacterial attack. Its physically hard work as the cap can be quite tough, strong enough even to support the weight of a person. 1 fermenter is no problem but when you have 20-30 on the go it you really need an extra pair of hands to spread the load. By the time you have finished No.20 then its often time to start again on No.1. Of course some wineries have mechanised systems to do this but wheres the 'handcrafted' in that.

Settle down...

Earlier in the week we picked in our Pinot Gris. The fruit was hand-harvested from the Georges Road Vineyard in Waipara. Upon arrival at the winery the fruit was whole-bunch pressed to a tank for a period of 48 hours settling. I racked the clear juice yesterday into another tank to begin fermentation. The photo above shows the difference between the settled juice and the heavy solids that were left behind.

At Sandihurst all our white wines are whole bunch pressed as I believe the resulting juice is of a higher quality, fresher and more pure, without the level of phenolics that can be extracted from crushing the fruit.

Its alive Egor !.....

Ive just added some yeast into one of our Pinot Noir fermenters. The yeast is VR5 from Fermicru. It contains 10 billion active dried yeast cells per gram! Thats a lot. Im adding at a rate of 20g per 100L. The yeast manufacturers make all sorts of claims about the properties of their yeasts. This one proports to 'support structure, body, and aromatic finesse'. Just what I need. In fact I have used it before and found it to be reliable, strong and with good effects on both fruit and colour.

Heres a few photos as I rehydrated the dried yeast over a 30 minute period before adding it to the fermenter.

First add the yeast to some tepid water. Then add the dried yeast. Let it acclimatise for a bit.

Mix it in and add a little sugar in the form of juice for the yeasts to feed on.

The yeast cells begin to be active. The volume in the bucket begins to grow.

All the while adding a little more juice to bring the temperature to within 10C of the juice temperature. Otherwise the yeast might get too much of a shock when added to the juice and begin to die. Lastly tip the bucket into the fermenter and mix well ! The yeasts must go crazy at this point, all that sugar...

Take a closer look...

Plucked from obscurity, this Pinot Noir bunch is pictured prior to losing its stem and ending up in an open topped fermenter. In a month or thereabouts the juice from the these berries will be wine. In a year or so, after ageing gracefully in a French oak barrique, they will end up in a bottle. Six months after that you will be pouring your first glass of the 2009 Sandihurst Waipara Pinot Noir.

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).

French culture at risk !

Decanter published this piece yesterday about the upcoming banning of alcohol consumption anywhere outside, even on cafe terraces. I was 3/4 the way of of my chair, en route to the roof, about to scream, when I noticed the article date..... Very good.

Biting the hand...

Making wine is the easy part. Heres a great piece from a website article of UK wine retailer Les Caves de Pyrene about how hard and one-sided it can be for wine merchants (and therefore wineries) out there in the marketplace.

Wine merchants are constantly enjoined to look at the bottom line profits of their customers; those customers, however, are rarely capable of seeing how sustainable margins are just as vital for wine merchants.

Flip the relationship on its head to understand its true dynamic.A wine merchant goes to a restaurant and eats a hearty meal. He is presented with the bill, looks at it, and says, “Thanks, but I’m trade. First you must give me 20% discount. And then I would like a free glass of champagne with every meal. And every Christmas I want to take my entire staff here for a free meal”.

He then says, “I’m not going to pay the bill now but in 30-45 days. By the way I’ll probably forget so you’ll have to remind me. In the mean time I’ll come back and have lunch regularly on the same terms; I won’t pay because it is an honour for you to have me dining at your restaurant”. One day he comes in and sees that the prices have been put up: “I’m not going to pay the new prices; you must keep them the same as before otherwise I will stop honouring you with my business”, to which the restaurateur replies: “You come in here, you carp and criticise, you eat our food and drink our wine, and then you pay when you feel like it.” The wine merchant snorts and expostulates: “Well, if that’s your attitude I will take my business elsewhere.”

To pick or not to pick...

Just been out in Waipara sampling some Pinot Noir to get an idea of when harvest might be.

Fruit looks great, its disease free, not overcropped and tastes superb. Seeds are crunchy to the bite and much browner than they were this time last year, indicating a greater level of phenolic maturity. Tannins will be ripe, not green. Ripeness appears quite uniform across the bunch.

From a simple refractometer test the current brix levels are 22.8 - fermented to dryness this might equate to something just over 13% alcohol (taking into account a half percent or so that may be lost during the open-top fermentation) . Sounds good so far.

Acidity levels range from 6.5 to 7.5 grams per litre. Again, almost exactly what we are looking for. Levels will fall during the secondary Malolactic fermentation as well so if anything these are a little low although tasting my way round a few vineyards and varieties in the region, this does seem to be a year of lower acids. I may have to add some acid to the ferments.

pH levels are between 3.1 to 3.2 - this is great for this time of year. As sugar (brix) levels rise pH can start to rocket. We need to be aware that the drop in acidity from the MLF will see a corresponding rise in the wines pH. If we are aiming for a final pH of around 3.65 then these current figures are ideal.

So whats holding me back. Shouldn't I call in the pickers? Almost - weather forecast is great for the next few days so perhaps sometime next week will be the time. This might allow for another 0.5% alcohol and some riper fruit characters in our Pinot. Stay tuned.

Could I get you a red wine to go with that piece of dark chocolate...

Via Decanter today......."Red wine increases the female libido, research has found. According to a study carried out by the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, drinking one to two glasses of red wine a day increases female sexual desire. The study investigated 789 Italian women aged between 18 and 50. Drinking red wine not only helps to release inhibitions, but also has a direct effect on sexual activity. Women who drink one to two glasses of wine a day were found to be more sexually active than those who abstain. Dark chocolate, which is rich in antioxidants, has a similarly positive effect on the female libido."

A appearance from Jack Frost...

An earlier than anticipated frost hit Central Otago yesterday morning. Wind machines kicked into action from about 6am on Sunday morning but there was no real damage reported. Its a sure sign that autumn is on its way. Central usually starts to get frosts from April onwards so this is unusual. Its a tough life growing grapes in Otago with extreme weather hazards at both ends of the season but the quality of the fruit that gets harvested usually makes up for it. Up to this point in the season most growers are extremely upbeat about the quality on the vine. So as long as that continues through until late April/early May then the wineries will be happy too.

Canterbury is also a region which loves a good frost too so with grapes being anything from 1-4 weeks away from harvest, growers up here will be keeping a watchful eye to the skies as well.

Cool climate wine drinking...

Theres a time and place to enjoy a good bottle of Pinot Noir. Is the middle of nowhere, on the high seas, halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica it - probably not, but thats what happened about a month back during the Portimao Global Ocean Race - an around-the-world yacht race for madmen.

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Jeremey Salvesen, a crew member on the British entry Mowgli writes on his blog that he celebrated his birthday with a glass or two of the Sandihurst Pinot Noir 2006. I've yet to hear what qualifies as room temperature down there, they may have had to warm the wine first.

Allez Le Beast ! ...

Theres a massive rise in the Internet and various forms of social media in particular, in relation to wine marketing etc. At Sandihurst Ive been checking it all out to see what works and what doesnt. Alot doesnt. There are a lot of boring, staid wine related videos out there but this is not one of them. Interesting website too. Check it out here.

Jancis Robinsons Wine Course - Episodes 1-4

New to Youtube, the 1995 TV series from the BBC. Essential viewing.

The harvest before the harvest...

A video from crushpad in California detailing the process of crop thinning, something we have been doing here in New Zealand on our vines in order to advance the quality and uniformity of the remaining fruit.

Basically, at veraison, any green fruit, any 'second-set', any green shoulders on any bunch or any bunch with any amount of disease or disorder is dropped to the ground. Often, depending on the varietal, we will also drop the 2nd and 3rd bunches on a shoot as well leaving only the primary bunch. If left on the vine none of these will ripen to the same degree at the primary bunch and this will bring down the overall quality of the crop. Thinning concentrates the flow of photosynthates into the remaining fruit. Up to 50% of the vines crop can be dropped onto the ground, something many growers find hard to watch.

"Contains Milk Products"...

You sometimes see on the back label the phrase "contains milk products" or 'fined using milk products, traces may remain". Its all part of the law surrounding the declaration of potential allergens (although whether any actually remain is in the wine is highly debatable).

While my usual goal is NOT to fine any of our wines (less is more), there are just some wines who are better off with a little fining. The fining agent of choice for me is usually egg white for our reds and milk for the whites.

And that's what I am doing at the minute - adding a little milk (trim milk, no need for the cream component here) as a gentle fining agent to our 2008 Riesling. Technically speaking I am adding casein which is the major protein in milk. Casein is positively charged and it attracts negatively charged particles in the wine which then fall under their own weight to the bottom of the tank and the fined wine is filtered off to another tank. Im using it just to brighten the wine colour and round out the palate as it drop out any bitter phenolic substances that may be in the wine.

Always crucial to do some bench trials first before adding anything to the wine. Im adding around 250mls per hectolitre which is at the lower end of the scale. I will give it a few days to settle out and then filter the wine to another tank as it continues its journey towards our bottling date in early April.

Barrel care...

When they say winemaking is 1% art, 2% science and 97% cleaning they're not wrong.

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Heres a couple of recent photos. Following the racking of our 2008 Pinot Noir to tank, in preparation for bottling in April, all barrels had to be cleaned. This is to get rid of the lees and any tartrate build-up accumulated from the last 10 months. Our barrel washer, as seen in the top photo, gives each barrel a hot wash. The barrel washer is a great piece of equipment which introduces the hot water via a Diesel powered pressure washer, sprays it all around the inside and then sucks it back out via the green hose. So good, so quick.

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Then in the bottom photo each barrel then gets a sulphur ring burnt inside to protect the empty barrel against bugs and bacteria. From the photo you can just make out the flame in the barrel. The barrels are then stored for the next couple of months as they wait for arrival the 2009 Pinot Noir in May/June.

And we're off...

Harvest has officially begun here in the South Island with grapes being picked today for sparkling wine base in Marlborough. Read more about it here in The Marlborough Express.

Its, as always, will be a drawn out affair with the majority of the final grapes to come in usually picked in Central Otago around early May.

As always harvest labour is a major issue at the time of year. While there are a number of picking crews around there are often not enough people to go around. Unlike other countries NZ does not have a ready source of migrant labour and many NZers dont seem to like this kind of work.

Stay tuned for more updates throughout the vintage.

You can tell a lot from a photo...

Here's the winery recently as we were bottling some of our 2008 white wines. As you can see its a decent sized winery but is also quite full. Some of the wine is in cases (we use only 6 bottle cases) - it is labelled and the market destination known. Some of the wine is cleanskin, stacked unlabelled on the Cellastac sheets in the foreground - to which market it will go is unknown so the bottles are unlabelled at this point as information required on the back labels changes depending on where the wine is sold. Either way the wine cannot stay where it is and must be moved to storage as I needed to rack the barrels out into tank shortly after. Most of those tanks have jacketed cooling systems which we need for fermentation control and cold stabilisation.

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There are 139 barrels in the picture, all full of Pinot Noir. On two different types of barrel rack - one good and one less so. In the background there are numerous tanks of varying sizes, from 10000L down to 1250L. So we a small producer, crushing around 100 tonnes of fruit into approximately 6500 cases annually. Our winery is basic in design but extremely functional and as good as you will find in the region. The building is well insulated and all winery operations are done inside, under cover, even fruit receival.

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What you cant see the 5 tonne Diemme press, just to the left of the photo, or our forklift which is one of our essential pieces of equipment. To the right of the photo, our Crusher-Destemmer, Sorting table and Elevator. I will detail all of those as the vintage approaches.

Marlborough update...

Here's a good, honest video update Ive pinched from Fiasco Wines about the current state of play in their Marlborough vineyards as we approach the last few weeks before harvest. It should be representative of the region and, like here in Canterbury, it appears that what they don't want is any more rain. Fingers crossed because after last years super-crop and the ensuing negativity from various export markets New Zealand needs a a good, quality vintage to restore its image.

Bottling time...

The end of the line. Fruit came in nearly a year ago and now its ready to go out the other end as a finished bottle of wine.

We are bottling our 2008 aromatics - Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Riesling.

Its great to see the finished product and know all the hard work and decisions that influenced the style of the wine but the final day is always tough and boring - folding 1000+ cases or loading 10000+ bottles on the line does get slightly repetitive !

Time now for the wine to get over the 'bottle shock' period, then for a further little bottle maturation and finally out the door to market.

Wine and Music matching...

New Zealand band Flight of the Conchords and the Sandihurst 2007 Central Otago Pinot Noir - a great match. And at 7.09 about the perfect length for a whole glass.

Friendly Fire...

New guidelines issued by the French Government state 'the consumption of wine, especially wine, is discouraged.
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This is on the back of information from the French National Cancer Institute that drinking alcohol increases your risk of mouth or throat cancer by 168%. Experts around the world have condemned the study as widely flawed and inaccurate but the damage have been done and French winemakers are naturally outraged at what they see as continued persecution of their industry from within. They are already up in arms over, amongst other things, the restrictive ban (the Loi Evin) on alcohol advertising within France.
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Coupled with further comment on the risks of meat, charcuterie, cigarettes and (no doubt) cheese the French people are upset. And when the French get upset they usually take to the streets. Keep watching.

A little sunshine on a rainy day...

The Online Friends of Sandihurst Society - Canterbury Branch

Just what you need in these tough times - a real bargain...or alcohol....or both.

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For those of you here in New Zealand I thought I could offer a blog-only special of a Sandihurst 6 bottle case of wine for only $115 and free delivery too. Taste your way through the different vintages and wine regions of NZ in one handy pack. All well made, quality wine (if I do say so myself).

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2 x Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2008

2 x Canterbury Riesling 2006

2 x Central Otago Pinot Noir 2007

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Great value, you cant go wrong. Email me at kirk@sandihurstwines.co.nz to order or if you would like to know more about the wines.

Cyclone Innis en route...

Tropical Cyclone Innis is heading for New Zealand and is expected to cause bad weather over practically all of our grape growing regions in the next few days. This morning the cyclone was downgraded to 'an intense low pressure system' which I think translates as 'large rain storm'. Its currently travelling at a fast 40km/hour and heavy rain warnings are in force in many parts of the country.

Fingers crossed it isn't too bad or too wet. Most vineyards have now been netted and this weather will begin to test how well their spray programs are working as disease pressure is sure to rise.

Follow it all on weatherwatch or metservice.