Be afraid...weeds...

and rabbits, long grass, moulds and mildews too for that matter.

Skills for life...

Theres something wrong here. And Im not sure which is worse, that there is such a video or that nearly 25000 people have already watched it. Still, if you are buying a bottle of Sandihurst wine YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS...Stay tuned for for the legendary follow-up, 'Pouring your wine into a glass'.

Hello from Waipara...

Ive been in the vineyard (Georges Road-Waipara) for the last two days helping out with the winter tasks - namely pruning and weed spraying. Frosty starts but beautifully warm and sunny days that made me think that spring was only just around the corner. Soil temperatures are still around 6-7C at the moment but it wont be long before it warms up and the vine begins to wake from dormancy. Bud burst could be as little as 5 weeks away in some varieties.

In the winery its also warming up and this will mean that the barrels of our 2009 Pinot Noir will kick off Malolactic fermentation soon. Just another piece of fine wine jigsaw.

Peleton...

Just a reminder about what a great spectacle the Tour de France is. Even if you arent into cycling.

Beautiful barrels...

Just tasting through our 2009 Pinot Noir which is currently maturing in barrique in our cold cellar awaiting some warmer temperatures so that the malolactic fermentation can kick off. Some of our oak comes from the Burgundy cooper Gillet. Heres a look at how each barrel is made, courtesy of BKWine who also have a large number of other interesting wine videos available to view on Youtube.

Industry turmoil continues...

When a handful of companies control most of the industry (in NZ) then there is bound to be trouble when one of them decides to make a few changes. The region of Gisborne has really taken a hit in the wake of Pernod-Ricards (Montana) decision to terminate a large number of contracts with its growers. The impact on the region will be quite far-reaching.

Read more here from the Gisborne Herald today. Or here in the NBR. And here for some video footage from TV3's national news.

.

.

Ps - thanks Castro-Martin (i think) for the great photo

Bottle Shock...

A few shots from our recent bottling run, our biggest yet. Four days of folding, lifting, packing and stacking that left everyone feeling more than a little sore. On the plus side though, it is the final act in the making of our wonderful product and it is highly satisfying to see the end product.

Wine should learn from Beer...

Beer advertising, it seems, has always been much better than its Wine counterpart at appealing and attracting a wide and youthful audience - the sort of audience that Wine should be trying to appeal to.

Wineries (with money and an advertising budget) pay attention...

Sanity and Sanitization are two different things...

Winemaking, as you often hear, is 1% art, 2% science and 97% cleaning. And let me tell you that there are times when the 97% cleaning part just loses its appeal. Just like any job there are bits you never enjoy. Most people, who ask what I do for a job, always say 'great, do you get to drink wine every day'. I dont tell them its less than 1% of the time...

Postcard from New Zealand...

Having a brief holiday in Kaikoura, about 2 hours up the coast from Christchurch. There are plenty of seals on the rugged beaches along the coastline and from our house we can see dolphins leaping out of the water. The house is over the road from the beach and at the back the hills rise steeply to the snow covered mountains beyond. Its picture postcard stuff. And remote too, getting out of the city reminds us how sparsely populated rural New Zealand is.

With a wine in one hand and a computer in the other...

Making wine is the easy part. The hard part is selling it. The times are changing and wineries are going to have to change their methods to keep up. WineBusiness.com recently published an interesting article by Liz Thach entitled Tips to Market Wine to Millenials. It seems that getting through to the young folk of today its all about reaching them ONLINE above anything else. Something that NZ wineries are not very good at doing, at least not yet. Read on...

.

To cut a long story short, the millennial generation is massive, growing and wine loving - but how to attract them to your product ? When buying it seems they value speed, reliability, friction free transactions, honesty and convenience. Price is not the major driver.

.

The majority of purchasing decisions are based on word of mouth which come from either face-to-face, online social networking or texting. When asked what type of wine advertising and promotion works best, the Millennials cited online marketing (Facebook, blogs etc) in first place and wine events as second.

.

Just a look at the online stats shows where the future lies. Most use Facebook and update at least twice a day, Twitter is popular but second to texting for short messages. 90% own cellphones and text on average 500/month. Email is old hat. A third have a blog and half read blogs. They watch huge amounts of online videos (eg Youtube) and forward to friends often. They spend more time online than in front of TV and use their phones almost as much as computers to connect to the Internet.

.

Ive just done a spellcheck on this blogpost and my computer has highlighted 'millennials', 'facebook', 'texting' and 'youtube'. If it cant keep up what chance have I, wheres my pipe and slippers?

New Zealands best unsigned band...

The Hustle
Listen here - http://www.box.net/shared/9vp6cvkufr

Celebrating a Great Vintage...

It all added up to a brilliant day recently when Sandihurst held its first annual End of Vintage celebration inside the winery...

take an empty winery...

cook up a storm...

a traditional Potjiekos meal...

invite alot of people...

serve it up...

a little conversation...

a dash of great music...

a firing squad for people misbehaving...

and an auction for a good cause (the Westpac Rescue Helicopter)

Riesling 2008...

Recent review from Jo Burzynska in The New Zealand Herald 12-6-09

Sandihurst Waipara Riesling 2008 $22.50

Sandihurst is a winery based in West Melton, a Canterbury sub-region that's a mere 20 minutes from central Christchurch. Sourcing fruit from across the South Island, this fragrant low-alcohol riesling is from its Waipara vineyard, brimming with succulent stone fruit and mandarin, combined with blossom, spice and mineral over a fresh lemony core.

Corked! - another wine movie...

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.

你好 Sandihurst...

Its not often the words 'high ranking official from Beijing' and 'Sandihurst Winery' go hand in hand but so it was yesterday when a visiting Chinese trade delegation rounded off their tour to New Zealand with a visit and tasting at our winery.
.
Pictured above, with winery owners Hennie and Celia Bosman, is the highest of those officials, Vice Minister Zhi Shuping of "General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China (AQSIQ)".
.
Quite timely as we work towards our wines beign available in mainland China.

Bienvenido a Sandihurst...

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 !

Testing, testing...

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.

.

Bentonite is a clay, basically an aluminium silicate, that when dispersed in water exists as minute flat plates. We add the Bentonite, in the order of 1-2g/L or thereabouts and mix the tank thoroughly. The positively charged proteins then attach themselves to the negatively charged and heavier Bentonite plates before falling to the bottom of the tank. We generally filter the now-stable wine to another tank. discarding the lees at the bottom.

.

The test for stability used here is simple. A 0.45u filtered sample is kept in a water bath at 80C for 6 hours and then cooled/observed for haze. As seen above this Riesling, after an addition of 1.2g/L, still exhibited a little haze so will need more Bentonite added.

Harnessing the Power of Rats...

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.

We love cork...

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.

Tools of the Trade...

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 !

Well done us...

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.

More cleaning...

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.

We clean them using the barrel washer shown above. A thin washer arm extends inside the barrel to the very bottom. About halfway down high pressure water is sprayed to all parts of the barrel and is then sucked back out the green hose via a vacuum ball at the end of the arm. All very efficient. I then fill the barrels with water to stand overnight just to reswell any stave's which may have opened as the wood dried when the barrel was empty. Once drained, the barrel is then ready to receive the new wine which will stay there for the best part of a year as it matures and develops.

Things you need in a winery...

A Fittings Board where you can keep all your valves, hose attachments, joiners, lees stirrer, reducers, caps, barrel spear etc. Essential in the ongoing drive for a clean and tidy winery.

The Top 10...

The 10 best architectural wonders of the wine world ? New Zealands Peregrine is in there. Check it out over on Designcrave.