Misha's Vineyard

Wine Tasting at Ah Foo's House

Last month we hosted 22 Japanese visitors (mainly sommeliers) at Misha’s Vineyard for an afternoon tour and tasting along with the President of our Japanese distributor, Masumoto-san.

We split the group into two and while one half enjoyed a wine tasting in Ah Foo’s house which Cassy and I hosted, the other half enjoyed a tour around the vineyard with Andy and Rich. During the tasting we started with Pinot Noir, the most savoury of our wines, and then took the group through our range of white aromatic wines. It was the perfect time to be trying the refreshing flavours of our aromatics in the late afternoon sun. There were many girls in our group of sommeliers and we noticed that they took a lot more photos when Rich was talking about the vineyard on the tour!

This was the first time we had used Ah Foo’s house as a ‘wine-tasting’ venue. We’ve done a lot of work with the restoration of this old goldminer’s ruins and it’s now an ideal place to hold a wine-tasting on the vineyard. Our visitors seemed to enjoy having the tasting out in the vineyard in a part of the region’s “history”.

Rich taking the vineyard tour

Although it was wonderful weather being out in the sun proved a little too hot for some of our visitors so we gave everyone a Misha’s Vineyard cap to wear whilst enjoying the tour of the vineyard.

It was fantastic to have so many people from Japan to come and try the wines and be able to see our very special location at Misha’s Vineyard. Thanks to Seino-san, a sommelier from Apicius in Tokyo, who helped with translating during the tastings and a very big thanks to Nagano-san, the CEO of Jiyugaoka Wine School, for these great photos.

Tags: Ah Foo, central otago pinot, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams

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An update from Rich
We have been hard at work ensuring the vines are looking happy and healthy as véraison has been coming on fast in the last few weeks due to a bout of warm sunny weather – finally!

Some of the work done on the vineyard include opening up the canopy on the ‘darker side’ of the Sauvignon Blanc and taking fruit off on the small shoots. We also dropped some weight out of the Abel clone Pinot Noir vines and opened the canopy there as well and moved through the Lakefront block removing any green fruit or green shoulders that we saw.

We’re now in the Top Block of the Pinot Noir and moving the wires up whilst also ensuring the vines are in balance and doing some leaf plucking where necessary to ensure adequate light penetration. We are getting some good consistency in the vineyard véraison is almost finished.

Interestingly, we our two Riesling blocks are showing quite marked differences with one block having bunches that range from small to large and quite advanced, whereas the other block has much smaller bunches but a bigger yield – it’s amazing how different the blocks are given their close proximity.

Highlights over the last few weeks was our visit from Masumoto-san, the President of our distribution company in Japan along with a group of 22 Japanese comprising wine trade and sommeliers – they were quite a fun bunch. We also had Garry King visit from Tonnellerie Saint Martin who provide some of our French oak barrels. We really enjoyed his laid-back style and it is always great to meet people that have a part to play in the production of our wines. It was great to have Eddie and Christine from Rathdowne Cellars in Melbourne come up to the vineyard and sit for an enjoyable tasting of wines in the afternoon sun at Ah Foo’s House. I always enjoy a break from the vineyard work to enjoy some of our wines with customers.

We have said goodbye to our German friends who had been working with us for 6 weeks and sadly Sai has now left our permanent team so we wish him all the best.

My lastest yield estimates look like we’ll have over 100 tonnes of fruit with Pinot Noir about 70% of that total. Now we play the waiting game until harvest. Looking forward to it!

(In this update I have included two charts below to show the difference a week can make on the vineyard in terms of véraison and also what our bunch sizes look like across the vineyard)

Clonal Selection 25th February

Just 10 days after the photo above – the development has been quite outstanding!

Clonal selection 5th March

Tags: Ah Foo, Aprevu, Apurevu, misha's, mishas vineyard, Rathdowne Cellars, Rich Williams, Tonnellerie Saint Martin, Wine Distributor

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