Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, Sandra and I are back into the full swing of NZ summer. Daylight at 6 and not dark until nine in the eve is really nice for Mid Jan. We are "all go" at Hawks Nest Vineyard and the grapes are growing rapidly. We have completed the leaf plucking as well have trimed off the excess vine shoots so now the vines all look nice a tidy and you can see in the photo I took yesterday from the front of our vineyard by the roadside. Now the long summer sun can hit directly on the growing grapes and the energy of the vines will go into growing good full bunches and not just of shooting off more excess vines. We look to have about 8 tons of total grapes this harvest with about 5 tons of Cab Franc and 3 tons of Malbac. The Malbec are growing a bit slower with fewer bunches this year but all in all Jeremy, our manager, is pleased with the crop to date. REmember we are an orchard as well and we are just about sold out of our avocados. We start selling avos from our honesty stall about mid-Nov and usually run out by mid Jan. We have a better crop this year and will be selling for about another two weeks it seems. We sell all by the roadside in our honesty stall. After hearing of the freeze in Calif two weeks ago I sure wish we could ship off some of ours to the states. We take and eat all the non selling fruit (that which is small or blimished) They are still good inside and we are "pigging out" on fresh avos just now. There is no good way to keep them so just munch away on them!!!

We live on the coast and like to be a bit of kayaking out along the coast here in Matakana. Here is a shot from this weekend showing a nice relaxing paddler enjoying the calm waters just offshore!!!!!!! (actually someone sent this to me and it MUST be a doctored photo) Anyway, Sandra has now sworn off of Sea Kayaking it seems after we got this via email!!!!

We are off the our local cinema tonight. That is the big news this summer in little Matakana. We how have a real live "walk in" movie theater that shows first run movies. We are going to see "the Queen" and hear it is very good. Before this week we had to go 45 minutes to go to a movie and thus rented DVD's mostly. NOw we have a three screen new state of the art cinema and will really love that I am sure. Here in NZ you can take wine into the movies--very civilized to say the least. Attached to the movie lobby is the new Matakana Wine Centre that is serving out wines by the glass. It is pretty cool to have some nibbles and a bottle or glass wine and take them all into the theatre to enjoy the show!!!

More soon and sorry that we are having so much summer fun here in NZ.


DR JIm and Sandra --loving being downunder in Jan.

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ
WE are home to Matakana Valley and all looks very green and lush. It is always strange when we come back from the US winter and awake the first AM here in NZ summer. It is daylight at 6 AM and the sun does not go down until almost 9 PM at this time of the year. That is a shock to our systems used to the Jan dark days of Nashville for sure. These long days of summer are what make our grapes grow so well. We caught up with Jeremy or manager yesterday and had a "walk about" at the vineyard. It has been very rainy the last two weeks and it shows with lots of green grass and much foliage on the vines.

What is going on with the grapes now?? The fruit is "set" in the bunches and the green grapes are enlarging. Now is the time that the sun needs to shine directly on the grapes to get them to grown well and to produce health bunches with large full grapes. To get more sunlight to hit the grapes we do leafplucking. We do it by hand (as we do everything here!!) and the photo shows two local girls busy at work removing the large leaves in the lower part of the vine canopy so sunlight can get through to the bunches. As you can see, they do not pluck off the top leaves as they are important for growth of the entire vine and thus health of the plants. By getting the lower third of the large leaves off the vines the grapes are exposed to sun and wind to dry out. Wind access becomes important as more sugar content begins to occurr in the ripening grapes. After rain and with summer humidy the grape bunches need to be able to "breath' to mature and to stay dry to reduce grape skin damage. If we need to spray we now have easy access direct to the ripening grapes and thus can do select targeted low volume spray application that does not harm the vine or the general environment. We can't be spray free but we try hard to only spray when really needed and with minimal volume of chemicals.

The other photo shows the hard work need in the cellar at this time of the year. Constant tasting of our 06 wine in the barrel is required to monitor the progress of the wine. That is our son, Brandon, working hard at the tasting chore!!!! Poor guy. As it gets warmer in Matakana with the summer temperature peak a bit of the wine evaporates and the barrels have to be "topped up" to keep air away from the juice in the barrels. (this is to minimize the wine oxidization) To protect the wine from fungus we have to add a small amount of sulfites. (that is why wine labels carry the statement--"contains sulfites") Since we want a finished quality wine that can be stored for some time so it can age gracefully, we have to do our best to keep the naturally occuring fungus levels very low in the barrels. Nature is the same in humans as well as with grapes. In my old career as a gynecologist I spent much time treating fungus infections in women that were hard to eradicate. Now I have learned that the darn fungus loves sweet grape juice as much as it does human tissues!!!!!!

So, I need to mow a bit around the vines and help out with the tasting chores so I better sign off for now.

More soon;

DR Jim--happy to be BACK DOWN UNDER!!!!!!

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, Sandra and I go off back to NZ tomorrow via Honolulu, and Sydney. I will be back on my tractor next week for sure. The grapes will in full summer mode--nice full green bunches growing in the long summer days of Matakana mid summer. It certainly will be nice to see the daylight early each AM and not have darkness fall until 9 PM. (think about the long days here in Nashville in July!!!) Even though it has been mild here in Tenn for the last few weeks I do now suffer from SAD ( known as seasonal affective disorder or in lay terms as the dark dreary days of mid winter!!!)

From talking to Jeremy at the vineyard all is well. The barrels of our aging 2006 wine are staying topped up and the sampling seems to suggest another wonderful vintage is in the works. Yes, I guess I will have to go back and sample some barrels soon just to confim the status of our new wines. We have a lot more wine aging this year--about 30 barrels. Depending on how we blend our wine later this year we will have up to maybe 500 cases to offer.

Regarding our 2005 release of Hawks Nest Orchard Block RED!!!!! Everyone who has tasted it has really liked it and are surprised that NZ can produce such a nice red blend with just Cab Franc and Malbec. Since Christmas we have hosted three tastings and all have been well attended. At least the word is now out in Nashville and the surrounding area that Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red is unusually good wine. (also in Chatt as well)

I bet the all of you on my email list about our wine are glad that Sandra and I are going back to NZ for 10 weeks as I am sure you are tired of my multiple email invites to events. Well, you now get time off until around Easter. We will be back mid March and are planning a BIG WINE DINNER at Watermark on April the 12th. That is the Thursday after Easter and should be super event. Waterermark is clearly THE PLACE for good food and wine in Nashville now so mark your calander now for that upcoming event. OH, do remember you can taste our wine there over winter as well as it is on Justin's wine menu there!!

My next post will be after I get back home to Matakana Valley and get my hands dirty at the vineyard and generally get in everyone's way as I usually do when there.

Sandra and I will see you in the US spring!!!

Dr Jim--heading off down under!!!!

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ Finally the year end celebrating is over- The eating, the drinking, the gifting, the visiting, the parties, and the cleaning up!!! Now we can all settle down to see how long it takes us to break all our New Years Resolutions. ME? I resolve to be a nicer person to all those that I meet this year and to stop interrupting those who are talking to me. (a life long fault of mine according to my wife since she never can complete a sentence when are are talking) Anyway, we are now starting to pack for New Zealand. So what about these two photos in this blog? Well, one is our lovely granddaughter, Cadance Hurt, who is three now an going to be a party animal as you can see in this photo. She is sooooo photogenic that I thought I should put her on the internet at a young age as I don't think 3 year olds have My Space or You Tube sites yet. The other photo is of Nick Sparks of here in Nashvegas at one of our past wine tastings last year.(on the right with the longer hair) I wanted to publicly thank Nick for his input on our wine. He has two very interesting web sites. (his day job is music, but this is "Music City" of course so that is to be expected of someone with a keen interest in wine) Nick keeps a nice events calender of wine events in Nashville and the region. It is www.NashvilleWineEvents.com and if you live here you need to bookmark it so you will be up to date on all wine events. His other site is self explainatory== www.DecantAndRant.com Do check this site out as well if you have time. I still have two more tasting events here in Nashville-tomorrow at Macke's in Green Hills after work and then on Thurs the 4th at Watermark also afterwork. After that, we are packing up and getting ready to go back to NZ. I probably won't blog again before we get back to lovely Matakana (unless I have a bit of time and something interesing to say about out wine and grapes) I need to get home to our vineyard before I comment on what is actually going on there just now. It will be good to get back to a place where it stays light until after 9 PM this time of the year.!!!! More from Down Under. Dr. JIm