Time to NET!!!

Our Malbec grapes have changed color now and the birds are circling around looking hungry!!! Thus we went through and did one more bit of bunch thinning this week to drop off any bad bunches or clumped together bunches as a last "trim" before covering the ripening grapes with netting. (once they are netted you really can't directly leaf pluck or actually easily mess with the grapes of course) In the photo you can see some grapes on the ground and the remaing bunches on the wines. Note there are no leaves around the bunches--just higher up on the vine. Thus the sun can shine directly on the grapes.

In the next photo you can see my wife, Sandra, clipping on the tops of the netting. Tied on her waist you see a plastic container which is avery specialized and high tech device holding a bunch of lime green grocery bag plastic clips-these are the same ones you get on a package of bread. (the high tech holder is the bottom half of a plastic gallon milk jug!!!) We walk along and clip the tops and bottoms of the netting around the grapes to leave no gaps for birds to enter. This is pretty tedious and requires a lot of pale green plastic clips. It took a team of 8 of us three days to lay out and tie down the netting this year. We have 10,000 meters of netting for all our rows. That is 6.2 miles of netting- which was a nice slow walk to place using the tractor going in reverse holding bags of the netting on a wood pallet on the front loader of the tractor. In the third photo you can see the tractor going backward toward the road with the bag holding the netting. The person walking is pulling out and placing the netting along the grapes. The netting is first attached to the clips on each pole and then we walk along with the grocery clips to fix the nets at the top and bottoms to hold it in place and keep the birds out. (I better stop this explaination as my wife says this is way more than any person needs to know about netting!!!!)

Anyway, we now have our grapes protected from the birds--baring a heavy wind storm.
More next time.

Summer is still glorious here in NZ.

Dr Jim Downunder

Veraison and bunch thinning of grapes

It is getting time to watch out for the birds here in Matakana Valley!!!. Our Grapes are starting to turn red and that attracts the sharp eye of all the birds. Veraison is the term used to signify that the grapes have changed color and when that occurs we know we are getting on well with the ripening process. In these two photos you can see some of the grapes are still green and some are redish already. In the wider shot if you enlarge it and look closely you can see we have thick bunches of the Malbec. Soon we will have to bunch thin. That is when we walk slowly along and cut and thus drop off certain bunches of grapes that are imperfect due to smaller grapes or bunched too close together. It is sad to see the grapes lying on the ground after you finish each row but it is for the better for the future of the wine. If too many bunches are touching each other they will get skin breaks and most likely fungus when ripening. So, we must "cull" some now to give us full growth of the better remaining bunches. I hate to do this job myself as it requires lots of little critical decisions. "does that bunch die or does it live to make wine????" Decisions, decisions, decisions--how I hate that. Alas, as in the animal world is it really "survival of the fittest" when it comes to hand crafted fine wines.

Once we do the bunch thinning we have to apply bird netting. Actually we don't "have to" use nets but if we don't we either have to pick before full ripeness or accept a very low yield at harvest. That is because we have many many birds in Matakana Valley. We are coastal with lots of sea birds and our grapes ripen at a time when other area fruits are not quite ripe enough to suit the bird's taste buds. Thus they really hammer the ripening grapes. Our ratio of birds to acres of grapes is highly in the favor of the birds. Also, locals do not poison birds here as they do in many grape growing regions of the world. New Zealand is not just nuclear free but also bird poison free (mostly!) Thus we net.

SO, next time I will talk a bit about netting and show some photos of that process.
Until then keep drinking Hawks Nest Matakana Red wine and thinking of summertime in the God Zone!!!!


Dr Jim downunder

Alert!!!!!! We now have two NZ themed wine dinners set for Middle Tennessee in April after Tennessee Easter Break. One will be at Watermark on April 12th and for those of you in Williamson County or elsewhere south of Nashville we plan a dinner at Red Pony on Main Street in Franklin. That dinner will hopefully be on April 26th!!!!! Pass the word!!

Some People have asked me what we have to do with our wine (besides taste it a lot!!!) as it ages for the 16 months that we leave our wine in French oak barrels. Obviously we store the barrels at proper temperatures so not much needs to be done except to top up the barrels with topping wine with evaporation of the wine (yes, there is always a little evaporation even with a tight bung--or could that be excess tasting of the barrel????) The other main task is to rack the wine and remove the lees. Lees and racking--"what is that" you say? Over time the sediment in the wine barrel settles to the bottom and allows the aging wine to clarify a bit. If you just move the barrel around you will stir up this sludge -called lees. So, we "rack" the wine by carefully moving it from one barrel to another one. This racking of the barrels allows the aging wine to be gently pulled off into a fresh clean barrel while leaving the sediment (lees) in the bottom of the barrel. The oldest and simplest way to do this is as shown in the photo. Note we have two barrels elevated using our tractor fork lift and a simple clear clean hose. Gravity does the work as the aging wine flows down into the lower fresh barre. We can tell immediately when the old barrel of wine is almost empty as the wine begins to show a bit cloudy coming out of the elevated barrel. Of course we clean the barrels into which we are transfering the aging wine and first burn sulfa tablets in the empty barrels to reduce the risk of fungus growth. If you note on most wine bottles you will see in small print on the back the words "contains sulfites". That is because a small amount of sulfa in a barrel helps to control the fungus growth that could affect the finished wine. No one wants moldy wine to drink!!!!!!!!

In the second photo you can see the barrel washing and cleaning process-which is done for us by a contract local barrel cleaner who has all the necessary special equipment. Ignore Jeremy on the tractor and focus on the two barrels in the forfront of the photo. If you look closely at the center top of the closest barrel, you will see a black handle on the metal tube shoved tightly into the bung hole. This pokes the hot water gun into the barrel and allows high pressure irrigation and thus "steam cleaning" of the barrel. In the process, high pressure jets of scalding water are used to rinse out the lees (crud on the bottom) and residual wine. The green hose is the outflow pipe by which the flushing fluid and debris flow out into our waste drain.

We dry out the freshly emptied and cleansed barrels before reusing them. In the last photo you can see some the emptied and cleansed barrels "resting" under the big avocado tree by our red shed. By keeping them in the shade while empty the don't get too warm before we refill them with cool wine and but them back in our shed cellar. We move the barrels around as needed using the metal barrel racks that can hold two barrels. Note them under the barrels. The tractor front fork lift fits perfectly into these racks. Unfortunately I am banned by my wife, Sandra, from driving around with full barrels of wine but I DO get to move some of the empty ones. (a full wine barrel has 225 liters of wine or 300 bottles of wine so it would be a shame to spill that much wine due to poor driving skills!!!)

This pretty much catches you up on what is going on down on the vineyard in Matakana in the middle of summer. As far as the grapes are concerned they are loving or long dry sunny days and are coming along just fine. Soon we will be putting the the netting over the bunches but that is another story!!!

If you are in the Nashville area reading this blog post note that we will be back in Tenn before Easter to host two nice wine tasting events in April where you can sample some of 2005 Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red wine. ONe will be at The Watermark on April the 12th and the second will be down in Franklin at the Red Pony on Main Streen. That one will also be in April after Easter break. So,, you have two upcoming chances to taste our wine this Tennessee spring.

See you soon, but now I have to go down to the beach to fetch some fresh seaweed for Sandra's garden mulch pile-maybe I will see some of those famous Kiwi summer time beach mushrooms while there:):):):):)

More next time.

Dr Jim Downunder.