WIINTER ARRIVES TO MATAKANA

It has been a long time since my last blog as we were traveling back to NZ and had to recover from the trip. I must say doing 6 flights across the Pacific annually is getting to be a hard slog on the old bod. We go coach and take lots of drugs but it never gets any easier it seems.

We missed the fall grape picking at Hawks Nest but did get to taste our fermenting barrel samples with our wine making team today. The three blokes in the photo are Darryl (in the middle who owns Ascension Vineyards that is the nicest and neatest place in Matakana Valley) , Mike, and good ole Jeremy- our vineyard manager on the left. They are holding glasses with fresh samples from our fermenting 2008 "wine in progress'" They are pretending the "wine" tastes good but beleive me it does not as it is still undegoing Malalactic fermentation and tastes gassy and acid-like. Thank goodness we don't try to sell it as it tastes today!!!


As I have noted before we were first an orchard and we are into our fall harvest of mandarins, limes, and Asian persimmons--which is our cash crop. We sell a little fruit to locals from our honesty stall. You can see Jeremy toping up the bags of fruit for weekend customers. It is so nice that we can sell fruit by the roadside with no one in attendance. Honesty still rules here in rural NZ and this is a holiday weekend so we will have lots of roadside traffic and collect a lot of coins over the weekend I am sure.

The third shot is also one I just took today from the roadside of our vineyard showing how our Malbec grape leaves turn a lovely golden orange just weeks after the harvest. Gee, as I look closely at the photo, I must say it is a lovely shot. These three photos capture the essence of what we love about Matakana. Nice people to work, play, and socialize with; lots of fresh fruit, fish, meat, and other products from the clean land and sea; and finally the lovely land, sea, and sky vistas all around us. Come here yourself and you will truly understand why New Zealand gets called the God Zone by more and more people who come to visit and often even stay!!!

More soon;

Dr Jim and Miss Sandra

NEW SIGN AT HAWKS NEST

We now have a new sign at our roadside. The old sign with the rainbow over it was nice but predated our grapes. It was used to alert those who passed by our site that we had various fruits for sale but said nothing about wine or where to taste and buy our wine.

Now that we have several vintages to sell in NZ, we needed a place so that people could sample our wines. We don't have cellar selling (yet) and thus many potential customers drove by but did not know we sold wine.

In the village of Matakana is the wonderful wine bar called The Vintry. It sells only local wines and we have been lucky to get our wines placed there for sale. So, on our new sign we have our wine label on the sign and add the fact that people can drive on about two miles to The Vintry to get samples, glasses, or even bottles of our wines. You can see the new sign in this photo sent to us by a couple that lives in Nashville but were visiting our area of NZ.
We love it when people stop by our place to take photos--it is scenic there for sure as you can see in the third photo. After the harvest our Malbec grape leaves change to that lovely burnt orange color.

More soon.

DR JIM

Fall in NZ

WELL, it is turning fall in NZ and I sure missed not being there for our harvest this year. We are still stuck in Nashville due to Sandra's mom being ill. Fall is stunning in our vineyard. Note in the two photos of our vineyard from this time last year to see the lovely colors. Our label reflects why you would see driving by our roadside in late May or Early JUne. The pale orange grapes are the Cab Franc and the brighter orange ones closest to our chimney are Malbec. I think Malbec could be the official grape for the Tennessee VOLS.

We have about 2 acres each of Malbec and Cab Franc and this year we good really good cropping from both grapes. Now that the crush is finished and the juice is fermenting in tanks, we can tally up volumes. WE have 2957 liters of Malbec and 2108 liters of our Cab Franc. If that was all blended together as our future 08 blend we would be able to produce about 6800 bottles or 560 cases. So, we now let our winemaker work his magic and get the barrels ready for the wine that will soon be pumped to start the aging process.

We will follow the progress of the wine carefully over the next year as it is barrel aged in French oak. Finally in Sept of 09 we will get it bottled and off to retailers in NZ and Tennessee. It takes a patient person to wait out all this delay in the true wine making process. Me? I am very impatient by nature.
What about that third photo? Well, our son, Brandon, took that one earlier this year while treking on the South Island of NZ. Gives you a sample of why we love the GOD ZONE so much.

Happy Mothers Day to you all. All of us either are or have a mother. So lets celebrate with a glass of good red wine---Such as Hawks Nest Orchard Block on Sun

More soon;

Dr JIm and Miss Sandra