Hot on the heels of Bottle Shock, Sideways, A Good Year and any other wine movie you can think of comes Corked!, a mockumentary-style film about the Californian wine industry. Click the links to read reviews from the LA Times or Hollywood Reporter or even from the movies own Facebook page.
Last spring at Sandihurst we hosted Chileans Sebastián Pérez-Canto Orellana and Jimena Cordovez of Andeswine.com as part of their Wine Tourism series from around the world. As well as tasting our wines and looking through the winery they were also quite taken with our ground breaking vineyard trial using recycled crushed glass as a reflective mulch. The above video is the result of their time with us. Disfrutar !
Just checking the 2009 Sandihurst Waipara Riesling for heat stability. Its a standard test that (nearly) all wineries do. Most white wines have Bentonite added to them in order to confer stability on the proteins found in wine. Unstable proteins, once too warm, give the wine an unsightly haze. A short clip showing how we empty our fermenters into the press once all the 'free run' wine has been pumped out. Its gentle on the fruit, no pumps here, but does involve a bit of muscle and the wine is generally quite cold on bare feet at this point. But of course that is why God invented Cellar Rats.
Good to see the occasional article in support of the mighty cork. Such support is a bit rare down here in New Zealand where something approaching 95% of all wine is under screwcap. But thanks to the beauty of the internet we can read newspapers such as the Miami Herald who's article today Good Cap Bad Cap looks beyond the bottle to the environmental issues of cork.
The three crucial things you need when you are digging out the skins from a Pinot Noir fermenter - not unlike a day at the beach - bucket spade and clean feet !
Just to mention that two of our wines, the 2007 Central Otago Pinot Noir and the 2007 Nelson Riesling, were both awarded a SILVER medal at the Selections Mondiales Des Vins, North Americas largest wine competition. 
When it comes to pressing this years Pinot Noir part of the job is to prepare the barrels in order to receive the new wine. The wine will be in the barrel for the best part of a year so they need to be in good shape. The barrels previously held last years wine of course but have been empty for the last couple of months. Empty but they had been sulphured in order to protect them against any unwanted bacteria and so now need to be cleaned.
Cameron Douglas from quaff.co.nz reviews the Sandihurst 2007 Riesling. Give it a try and see if you agree with him.
Dumping Sauvignon BlancNot quite as riveting as Jamie Goodes Mosel video but an important part in the process from grape to glass never-the-less. During ferment the CO2 produced pushes the skins to the surface of the fermenter. With Pinot Noir we usually hand plunge the cap back into the wine at regular intervals to stop the skins from drying out and attracting bacteria and to enhance the maceration/extraction of phenolic compounds. With Syrah, as above, we choose to pump over the wine onto the cap where we can be a little more gentle on the skins (which have more tannin than Pinot anyway) and provide the fermenting wine with a valuable source of oxygen (Syrah yeasts often misbehave if not supplied with the right conditions for ferment).
A quick look at my wild Riesling fermenting in barrel. Its nearly fermented dry but, as is normal, has slowed right down towards the end and who knows how much longer it will take. Last years Riesling was still going in December. This has taken 10 days to date with temperatures peaking around 20C. Its at 0 Brix right now but still has well in excess of 10g/L residual sugar. Wherever it stops is wherever it stops (if I was French I would now be shrugging my shoulders and saying 'the wine decides'). At this stage it might be a special interest bottling of just this barrel or, at around 2% of the final Riesling blend, might add something special to our final 09 wine. Too early to tell yet.
All the fruit has now been harvested and the vine has done its job for the season. Winters approaching, the leaves have gone and the soil temperature is starting to dip below around 10C which means the vine is beginning to shut down into a start of dormancy for the winter. This lasts through until spring time and is the timeframe we have to complete pruning. 
No one likes having the boot put in or enjoys the misery of others....unless that is, it qualifies as part of the traditional trans-Tasman rivalry. Then its all good fun. Heres Oz Clarke on Australian wines at the recent Decanter World Wine awards.
Our Sandihurst 2007 Central Otago Pinot Noir has been awarded a prestigious GOLD MEDAL at the London International Wine Challenge, the worlds largest wine competition. This is great news for us and follows on from the gold medal we received (in the Liquorland Top 100)for our 2006 Pinot Noir.
Well done us !
Comment today on Tizwine.com Waipara Valley 2009 Vintage one of the best on record.A great flowering coupled with excellent vine management will make Waipara Valley 2009 Vintage one of the best on record.The 2009 Waipara Wine harvest has been an outstanding success for both growers and producers.With almost ideal flowering in late spring, vineyards in the Waipara Valley were favoured with above average December and January temperatures resulting in a much earlier harvest. Harvesting started in late March and was almost complete except for the later varieties.Ivan Donaldson from Pegasus Bay Wines states “ We can already taste the quality in the wines that have finished fermentation and we feel this will be an exceptional vintage for both red and white wines”.All varieties will show some outstanding wines. It may be hard to pick the best but Pinot Noir and possibly Chardonnay could head the list. Gwyn Williams of Vinecare remarks that "this harvest demonstrates the quality and variety of fruit that can be produced in the region".
Tasting the wine determines when to press the skins. Colour extraction from the skins occurs mostly in the pre-ferment stage while the extraction of tannin from skins and seeds happens post fermentation. Determining the optimum point to press off is crucial. 
From the fermenter the 'free-run' wine is pumped to a settling tank. Whats left behind in the fermenter are the skins and seeds and wine. Thats when the hired help jump in, bucket in hand. 
The skin/seed/wine is bucketed out of the fermenter onto the conveyor which takes it straight into the press.
The press squeezes out the remaining wine in gentle incremental steps. I taste the pressed juice at every step to determine its quality and when to stop the cycle. Although the pressure is programmed to a max of 2bar we never let it get that high, for quality reasons. From a tonne of grapes we end up with around 65% liquid as wine.
