Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, the first of our fermenting juice has been now pressed and transfered into holding tanks before going into barrels. This is very labor intensive and can be a bit messy. (too bad we can't do it the old way with young lasses stomping the juice!!!!) In the photo you see our team. John our winemaker on the left, me in the middle getting in the way as usual, and Jeremy our vineyard manager. Behind us you can see one of the stainless steel fermenting tanks wrapped with a white heating blanket to keep the temp up so that the brew keeps cooking away.

John has his hand on his "baby"= a fine quality Italian wine mechanical wine press. We pump off the juice from the bottom of the fermenting tanks and then shovel the remaining pulp into the top of the press. Slow pressing sweezes the soggy pulp and extracts more of the juice into the bottom of the press where it runs by gravity into the white vat seen close up in the second photo. Those are my messy hands from mucking around in the juice. This last bit of juice gets pumped into storage tanks with the other juice and the remaining crushed grape skins get used as good compost material in the orchard.
Next time I will show some of the big piles of grape skins that accumulate with the pressing process. It is really a relief to see the fresh juice go into the holding tanks as not much can go wrong after that unless John has a brainfart and really screws up the latter stages of wine making. (he is too good to ever do that so now we can stop worrying about the wine and just let it "do it's natural thing") It looks like barrel city just outside our shed just now as all the one year old barrels are getting cleaned and ready to reveive the new wine forstorage while finishing secondary fermentation and then aging.

More soon from early Fall in the GodZone called Matakana Valley!!!

DR Jim =Downunder