Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well. I said that our grapes were about to wake up from winter. Here is the first bit of bud burst from that same vine that I photographed in my past blog. Each of these blooms will now lead to fast growing shoots that will grow toward the sun rapidly. Note that the distance between each bud is about equal to one's fist. Shoot thinning will be next. As the buds shot up small vines, we will walk through the vineyard slowly and pinch off any new shoots that are too close to others. Eary vine management is key to getting proper controlled growth. (no sense having the poor vine work overtime growing useless vines that will overload the work of making quality grape bunches later) Bunch thinning is easy and requires just a slow walk amoung the vines and occasionally pinching off a new shoot to keep them all easily spaced--my sort of work.

Bottling update. We are all set to bottle all of our three wines this coming Friday. We will truck out wines in separate containers early in the AM to the bottling plant about an hour away. We will first bottle our own prize Malbec/Cab Franc blend first doing 25oo bottles and then 45 magnums as well. ( a magnum is 1500 cc or two standard bottles). These magnums will not be for sale but for our own personal use and as gifts for special occasions over the next decade. This 2005 vintage is really special and thus we have made the decision to hold some for it to age. Locals tell us that this is the best harvest year ever since the first grape plantings in Matakana Valley in the late 1980's so we thought we better plan to cellar some of our goo year.

Secondly we will bottle the local NZ 2005 wine which is very good Merlot from grapes we bought from Hawks Bay. This wine is very similar to our current Hawks Nest 2004 Orchard Block Red but needs a bit more maturing. We will have about 300o bottles of that as well and will only sell it in NZ.

Finally we will have 500 bottles of Rose that taste yummy and that will sell well here in NZ over the southern summertime. We are excited to get the bottling all done and I promise some photos of that in my next blog.

That is all for now. Time to go to the beach for a Sun AM walk.

DR Jim Downunder