Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, today is a wonderful day in the short life of Hawks Nest Vineyard. We finally have our bottles of Orchard Block Red in retail stores here in Nashville!!! It sure took a lot longer than I ever imagined. Anyway, it is now out there on offer as a friend just emailed to say he took a bottle home and has just "sampled" it. (it is just after 5 PM on Fri. so it definitely is time for libations)

Sandra and I are really glad that the wine is finally on the retail shelves before we go back to NZ for the next 10 weeks. I am sure that our paultry 80 cases will be all gone by the time we return to Nashville the end of June. At that time I will bring back barrel samples of our 05 vintage to share with the brain trust at Lipmans that will be almost ready to bottle. Our wine maker wants to keep our wine in barrels for 16 months this year to get the best flavors out of those expensive new French oak barrels that I bought last year. Thus we will bottle in late September.
So this is all for now from Nashville. Next week I will be back on the job in Matakana and will give you a catch up on our upcoming 06 harvest. The weather is holding clear and dry at our vineyard so we are on the home stretch for our harvest.

Happy Spring drinking!!!

DR JIm

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ
People have asked how we were able to get wine from our little four acres of land in Matakana, NZ for sale in Middle Tennessee. Beleive me, it was not easy. Life is full of little roadblocks but there sure are a lot of steps one has to take to get wine from New Zealand into Tennessee. I won't even try to go into all that has to be done to export wine out of NZ and then import it into the states and then finally the state of Tenn. Just let me say the path is long and convulated at best.

We would have never gotten it done without the help of the guys in this photo. From the left they are Jason, Richard, Robert Lipman and his daughter, Gracie. They helped us tremendously over the last 10 months to get our wine into Tennessee. Lucky for us they visited Matakana Valley and Hawks Nest Vineyard last May and liked our wine, our vines, our site, our winemaker and our vision to sell quality NZ red wine into Tennessee. Now, with their help our first release-Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red- is finally available in Middle Tennessee.

The wine is now "resting" in the Robert Lipman Nashville warehouse after it's long trip from down under before it's release. You can now ask for it at your local bottle shop and tell your local wine consultant that you want to try some of that new New Zealand Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red. We know you will like it if you give it a try. It will be retailing for around $29 locally.

SO, do give our wine a try and let us know what you think about it. We are proud of it and can already promise that our next release this fall of our 05 wine will be even better!!!


"life is too short to drink bad wine"

DR Jim Downunder

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ Well, I have been away and sick as well so those of you excitedly waiting for my next post can now relax. Just when everything seems to be going well at the vineyard up pops potential trouble. Have you heard about the cyclone in Australia that wiped out the banana farms and distroyed so much in northern Queensland? That storm is now drifting to the East toward NZ. If it takes a southern track it could brush close to us in Matakana. Cyclones are just hurricaines in the South Pacific that spin the other direction. They only rarely affect NZ as the water cools that far south. Now, with global warming there are predictions of more cyclone effects for North NZ. We could get a lot of rain in a few days and that could be terrible for us at this late growing stage. Jeremy our vineyard manager will get out our talcum powder bags and spread it on the grape bunches. Yes, just as the French do we use this old method to dry out grape bunches when they are fat and pressing together when it rains and is warm with good sugar levels in the grapes. It dries out the water on the fruit and thus reduces the fungus proliferation. Not only is in very So, join us in praying to the Gods of weather to blow that storm off to the North East!!! More soon. Dr. JIm

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Someone asked me why I had not put up our label on this blog. Sooooo, here is our export bottle of wine for our first harvest. We only have 80 cases for sale in the states so it on allocation. This is only being sold in Tennessee at this time and retails for $29.95 and I think it is a steal at the price. There are few red blends from NZ sold in Tennessee and all of them cost more but none are better in my humble opinion. (I am a bit biased of course but try it yourself)

Most NZ wines sold here in Tennessee are either the Sav Blanc or red Pinot. After the movie "Sideways" came out, it led to an increase in US Pinot Noir sales of 20% I was told by Robert Lipman who sure knows his US wine sales info. NZ makes great Pinot but none is planted as far north as the Matakana area. Our fall nights are not cool and dry enough. So, sorry, but Hawks Nest will only be able to offer a PN if we source the grapes from down south. Maybe in the future we will do that but first we have to got our Orchard Block red blend perfected with our local hand-nurtured grapes that we are now fussing over so much.

Talk about your global warming--it was 82 degrees heree in Nashville on March 12th!!! Weird!!!

DR Downunder

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, Sandra and I are back in Tennessee and recovering from jetlag quickly as spring has sprung in Nashville and it is warm and sunny today. Last night I hosted a NZ wine dinner that spotlighted our Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red wine that will be for sale here in Tennessee in about two weeks. The wine is in transit and I am really excited to be finally having wine to sell here after 5 years of messing with grapes in Matakana.

We had about 60 people at our wine dinner last night and everyone had fun and seemed to like all the NZ wines on offer by Lipman Brothers and Ed Fryer who owns the Green Hills Wine Shoppe and carries the widest selection of NZ wines in this region. Ed was at the dinner and has been very supportive of our efforts to promote our wine here in Tennessee.
Meanwhile back in Matakana the weather is staying sunny and dry and I hear that the grapes are really finishing their maturation process perfectly. We will keep our fingers crossed over these last few weeks of grape growth and hope there is no hail or heavy rain with wind that could adversely affect our harvest. It seems that these last three years have been the best ever for grapes in the Matakana Valley--hope it holds up!!!

DR JIM Downunder

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, we are going back to Nashville tomorrow so this will be the last "live report" from Matakana until April the 5th when we return for the fall harvests. We are now worried that our Merlot grapes will be ready for harvest before we return. (the grapes wait for no one!!!) The early fall weather has been sooo perfect here this month that everyone's grapes are two weeks riper than usual. This causes a problem of course because the cycle of the harvest is like a well orchestrated play. The pickers have to be ready and the winemakers have to have all tanks lined up as well as their supplies. The harvest here is done two ways. 1. "friends and family for a party" or 2. contract pickers.
With a two week early date for ripening some of the contract pickers may have other jobs or be in other areas. (they do move about NZ to meet the demands). Thus there is a dash now to line up picking staff. The must fun way to pick of course it to have a big party and invite everyone you know and to ply them with wine, food, and good fellowship. That is how we have done it. We hand pick for quality and since we are small we can usually do it in a day if we get 20 people helping. The problem with the "friends and family" approach is that some people may not show at the last minute or if they do show they may just goof off and be not productive. The might even eat too much at the pickers lunch and go off for a nap under the vines. Anyway, we pick different grapes at different times of course depending or ripening. Usually we are about two weeks later with our Cab Franc than with our Malbac. For our first picking we have just decided to get contract pickers and for the later picking which will be in mid April most likey we will go the party day method that is so fun for all of us.
When to pick? When the winemaker says based on sugar content of the grapes, weather forcast, and vine stability (if there is risk of botrytius we will maybe pick a day or two earlier if the weather forcast is for rain) Picking time is critical as we want the ripest fruit but don't want it over ripe-there is a lot of witchcraft involved it seems.
Anyway, more on the picking process soon.

I will check in again from Tennessee in a few days. ON March 9th we have a NZ wine dinner in Nashville and are all excited to be hosting that later this week. Getting our export wine for sale in Nashville is very exciting for us and I will talk about that process next time.

DR Jim Downunder (for at least 24 more hours)

This shot shows a police car that Sandra and I spotted last week here in Matakana with a few big pot plants in the back seat. As in Tennessee, this weed is the number one cash crop here in Northland New Zealand. The cop stopped at the local coffe shop for a bite of lunch and must have had the munchies after his last "arrest". I did ask him if it was ok to photo the "evidence" and he was very laid back about it and said "sure, but don't try to steal any of my evidence' as he entered the cafe. NZ is fairly laid back about grass possession in small amounts but this seemed to be an entire row of nice plants. This is an indication of how well most plants grow here in the mild summers with long daylight time and lots of rain. What is good for the grape is good for the pot I guess. At least the tax man gets his pound of flesh from us and our grapes. (there is a flat 3.5% tax on wine here the we pay all at once when we take our bottles out of bonded storage to sell.
Speaking of selling, we are off to a good start selling our 04 NZ wine here in our region. All of the local bottle shops and bars have agreed to take the wine on as they all support the local growers. We will be selling about 1500 bottles of our NZ red blended for local sales. Our best blend went off to Nashville to be sold in Tennessee but what we kept back here to sell to our neighbors is pretty darn good stuff. It is 60% local Merlot from a vineyard just down the road from us and 40% our own young Malbac. It is a nice light low tannin red suitable for early drinking and seems to be a hit locally at the price of NZ $19.95

We are off to America on March the 7 for three weeks and may actually miss the picking of our Cab Franc as it is ripening quicker this year than in the last two years. (global warming?) Actually everyone on in our region say there grapes are about two weeks ahead of average ripening times.

Next time I will talk about just how one decides when to actually pick grapes around here--sort of interesting.

DR D Downunder