We've Moved

Future posts on New Blog: www.georgetownvineyard.wordpress.com

Thanks
Ian

Composting

Last week Soon and I spread out the compost I made last winter and spring.

I decided to just try and even out the growth variability due to soil variations. Being predominantly alluvial there is reasonable variation. For some reason the growth variations were great this year. I didn't test the final compost but I'm confident there's plenty of nitrogenous matter in there and it has composted well. I guess we'll see. At the very least we've introduced lots of worms.

We really wanted to do it on a descending moon but couldn't wait as soon had to pick on another vineyard. We weren't far out anyway. We've since had plenty of rain and It'll be soaking right now. The compost I'm making from this harvest we'll put on in early spring then turn it in with a disc and undervine weeder so it doesn't get UV'd and is well mixed into the soil.

It's amazing how little we ended up with after it's composted and dried up a little. So only enough to do the most variable 2/3rds of the vineyard. I'll make a little more this year. Last year I reckon I made more than enough to replace the nutrients we took out in wine.

Aussie Birds

What do you do if an Aussie bird craps on your windscreen - Don't take her out again.

Is the waxeye an Aussie bird? It must be - They're so vandalistic. They're incredible, like they've got something against winegrowers. Apparently they came to NZ in 1832 - probably kicked out of Australia for doing too much damage.

Anyway they did a lot of damage to some of our crop this year. We lost about 10% of our 114 which is side netted. It also took us hours to sort through the bird pecked berries to make sure volatile acid (VA) wouldn't spread through the ferment. The bird banger started going slow in the last week before harvest and I didn't have enough time to shoot. So next year we're splashing out again and buying more over row nets.

The worst thing about these birds is that they don't eat the berries. They put a hole in them, lick the juice then go to the next berry. The problem is the open wound, which the bees and flies get into and introduce bacteria to the juice, starting the VA process.

Maybe it's our version of the Burgundy bot?

So we finished harvest - a pretty low crop. So far the wine looks good and concentrated. Will taste once dry - probably next week.

Ian

Wooden Terror

We just bought our first barrels. For our first 3 years we've been renting them. Mount Edward couldn't be bank for us any longer so we're having to splash out. So far we've got our used barrels. We've still got to buy the new ones. Last year the average price for a new one was $NZ1675 each. On average they last for 3 to 4 years. Hopefully they're a bit cheaper this year with a weaker euro.

The photo of the barrel head shows an older barrel. From the stencils on the head we can tell quite a bit. The manufacture is Billon. When newer these seem to give a mouth filling mocha portion to our wine. The forest is Allier. Allier is a cooler wetter forest and produces tight grained wood. Tight grained wood seems to suit our barrels giving it nice structure and enhancing elegance. This one is medium plus toast which gives that toast influence. The staves for this barrel were outside in the weather for 3 years before being curved into a barrel. Made in 2006. at the bottom is certification that it was made by traditional methods.

Barrels add something and there are thousands of variables they can introduce. Something I'm trying to reduce. Before we bought this property the wine was aged in american oak with very heavy toasting. The wine became a background thing and the wood smacked you right in the mouth. Apparently it aged well but the site expression was lost.

This part of our wine making process is the only part (barring the initial planting of foreign vines) that introduces an exotic terroir. Unfortunately NZ oak is too porous for the job of barrelling. Ultimately I would like to use NZ native timber. This, as far as I know hasn't been done yet. Beech has been used in other countries in whites but not NZ beech. We need to do some experimentation and research there to create more true site expression and less foreign interference. If successful we might take more note of the riches we had here and replant native forests.

For now we'll continue with the traditional method of aging and malo fermenting.

Trimming the Edges of the Bell

At the moment Soon and Rene are doing the 2nd fruit thin (3rd for the clone 5). Really need to get it done while moon still ascending and newish. It's easiest done about 1/2 veraison (colour change). There's a lot of variation this year. Some of which we've evened out already. Now it's mainly evening out between plants. Taking out that10% green grape that might otherwise be picked and slow down ripening of the others. If you're statistically minded, its taking out the left hand 10% of the bell shaped curve and then waiting for that bell shaped curve to modify itself over the next 6 weeks so things ripen together. 10% isn't much this year we've got about 12 bunches per vine. So just a tidy up really. With resulting 70g bunches, we should get .75kg/plant which'll give us 5t/Ha. That's enough numbers for today

The guys are also taking off some of the older leaves to open up the canopy a bit more. We don't put on any botryticides so need to keep it open. Fortunately fairly open already and not too many laterals or second set this year.

Actually I lied, here's some more numbers:

Some people use this phenological growth stage to get the numbers to match up. Match up to what? Burgundy appellations.

Grand Cru is less than 35HL/Ha or ~5.4t/Ha

Premier Cru is less than 45HL/Ha or ~6.9t/Ha

And these are from vineyards planted at 8000+ vines/Ha (supposedly). At max grand cru production (assuming no distilling for over production) this leads to about 2/3 kg/plant. In the nouveau world (well at least in central otago) good practice is to shoot thin to 10 shoots/m. If this was the case in Burgundy and they fruit thinned to 1 bunch/shoot that'd mean 65 g bunches. That doesn't happen too often. So they leave less buds at pruning and therefore less shoots etc. Then Monsieur Mildew and bot do their bit and a fair bit gets selected out at harvest. Which is best practice?

The rules for the appellations were pretty much set about 100 years ago. Big knowledge improvements since then. However the soils have most likely got worse during that time (and beforehand) and probably couldn't sustain the gains from technology.

Central Otago soils are light but young and give it their all. Who knows what they should produce. Recently someone suggested to me quality was directly proportional to yield (per Ha). This means a straight line relation between the two ie 1 t/Ha is 5x better than 5t/Ha. I don't think the average drinker could discern this (actually this is proven fact) but maybe judges and writers can to a little extent. Maybe not exactly linearly but if you're judged the best in the world maybe your price can go up x fold too.

Something I often ask myself is why does t/Ha matter so much anyway. What about kg/m, g/bunch or g/berry? and why is 8000+ vines/Ha good? I'll answer that when I think I know.

Ian