Misha's Vineyard

Is Central Otago Pinot as Good as it Gets?

Central Otago is a phenomenon in the wine world – a region that produces an infinitesimal amount of wine in global terms but a region which is not insignificant in terms of its reputation.

In the February edition of Wine Business Magazine Misha looks at whether the quality of its wines live up to the hype! The article explores the region, the organizations and the fast transition from pioneering wine district onto the centre stage of world wines.

To read the full article download the PDF version below.

Is Central Otago Pinot as Good as it Gets? – Download PDF

To subscribe to WBM – click here

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, Misha, Misha Wilkinson, misha's, mishas vineyard, new zealand wine, pinot noir, WBM, wine Business Magazine, Wine Business Monthly

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Our Japanese distributor, Apurevu Trading, is really making the most of their “exclusively New Zealand” wine portfolio. After participating in many different trade events recently, they held their own event in Tokyo on the 7th September for the first time. They exhibited over 50 New Zealand wines with more than 120 trade clients attending the event in spite of it being an extremely hot day in Tokyo! The good news was that the feedback from their customers about our wines was incredibly positive – we seem to produce a style of wines that really hits the mark in Tokyo where they particularly appreciate the aromatics of our white wines and the structure and finesse of our Pinot Noir. We hope Apurevu do more events as it helps to create more interest in New Zealand wine in Japan.

Tags: Apurevu, misha's, mishas vineyard, new zealand wine

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An update from Rich Williams – Vineyard Manager

August has delivered some warmer weather with a bit of rain and fog thrown in but always cleared up to be nice and warm days. We had some 80km/hr winds earlier in the month but has been mostly settled and fine. The grass has greened up and the sap is starting to flow in the vines as we gear up for bud burst. I have experienced some quite strange occurrences in and around the vineyard. I have seen rabbits in trees eating high up in the briar bushes! No kidding! As well as this, upon digging in the Lakefront block found a vine root actually growing through the middle of a small rock! There must have been some tasty nutrients on the other side of that rock that the vine root wanted. Nature never fails to surprise.

We have made good progress with the pruning this month. The Top Block is all done and looking really good. The Sav Blanc on the steep Ski slope is 90% finished. The Savvy has been cane pruned which utilises the more fertile buds on the cane to ensure the best yield as Sav Blanc tends to produce infertile buds on the first two nodes. I was a bit worried initially that the canes wouldn’t be long enough to have a decent crop and also invigorate the vines into developing some good strong healthy growth for the coming season. We have been especially careful here with cane length and bud numbers as to not put too much stress on these plants. I’m amazed that they have turned out so well and given some accurate and early shoot thinning I think the Savvy will come through well this year. We will finish off the tying down next week as I want to get some rain on the brittle canes to ease the wrapping process. This has allowed us to move up to the Fruit Bowl and finish off the Gewurztraminer. This block also is looking really good and is such a challenging block to manage as there are quite different light and heavy soils through here with differing soil moisture content but this will only add to complexity once we gain control over them. This has been achieved by careful selection of well spaced spurs and a mix of cane on heavy soil to match vine vigour to capacity. The crew has done a great job accentuating wire fill through here as well which should provide a more appropriate tonnage and a little more wine for the people who love it. I’m looking forward to seeing how this block performs through the season. I still have concerns about the drainage through the centre of this block and I’m tempted to dig some drainage pipe through here under the vines which would remove excess water runoff from the buildings through the block and then allow for additional irrigation to be given to the drier parts giving better consistency.

Two of the Aquaflex soil moisture strips have been installed and the third will be installed in the coming week when a concrete decision is made on its position. The other moisture strip has been installed in the top irrigation block of the Ski Slope in the Sav Blanc just above half way. I was a bit afraid to start digging here as there are plenty of large rocks strewn around the surface however upon digging it was a different story. Soil tests have revealed the Ski Slope is one of the heaviest soils on top, however I got a big surprise when I found it was sitting on coarse golden sand and was easy digging down to 650 cm. Root distribution was still in the top 5-35cm of soil though vine size was quite small. Just to back up the complex nature of the soils here, I replaced a broken post about 50 meters downhill and the soil was instead 15cm of sticky yellow/red clay on top of gravel and large rocks.

Counts for replants have been done and old spray guards around older vines have been removed to tidy the place up. Vines of appropriate clone and rootstock will arrive in the next couple of weeks to fill up the gaps. Things to come in the next month will be the ongoing task of removing metal pins, vineyard maintenance, sheep grazing, and fertiliser spreading, replants and then of course budburst at the end of September.

I’m also just back from Dunedin attending Neil Kinsey’s “Principles of soil fertility” course based on the Albrecht system. It was an amazingly informative and detailed course and Neil had some funny stories to tell while we listened attentively to soil stuff over the 10 hour days. He reminded me of Colonel Sanders of the soil.

I’ve come back to the vineyard with many new ideas and confirmation that most of what we are doing is headed in the right direction. The detail I’ve collected may bee too much for this blog but it will keep Robin and the team entertained for the next few weeks. The main message however was “we should first treat the soil, then the plants”!

Tags: central otago pinot, Gewurztraminer, Misha, misha's, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams, Sauvignon Blanc

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Just over a month ago Rich Williams, our vineyard manager, sent in a photo of the development of various clones around the vineyard. (see 10th March blog). The response was quite overwhelming with many comments coming to us on how informative this was and how many of our blog followers would be interested in seeing later development just before we harvested.

Below is the same set of grape clones from 10th April. It really does give a wonderful perspective of the ripening process. We are now about 30% through our harvest and really excited about the quality of this year’s vintage.
Thanks to Rich for taking the time to get these samples together and do the expert photography!

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Gewurztraminer, Limelight Riesling, misha's, mishas vineyard, Pinot Gris, Rich Williams, Riesling

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An update from Vineyard Manager Rich Williams

Ripening has progressed solidly in the last month and we are just a couple of days from harvest.

Now that the vineyard has been covered by bird nets and all our green thinning has been completed, we have been enjoying a quiet spell for a change. This gives us the opportunity to clean bins and prepare for the pick. Once we start bringing in fruit, it will be non-stop and so everything must be organised and ready to go. Workers for harvest have been recruited and I am looking forward to working alongside the team chosen to work with us through the harvest weeks.

Andy and Misha are here in Central Otago now to ensure things go smoothly and there are no unripe bunches picked – our quality control team!

It is always a tedious wait for the Vineyard Manager and team until that call comes from the Winemaker to start picking. I am on the edge of my seat waiting for those mysterious flavours to arrive and we continue to send off samples to the winery to test for brix and acids. So far the numbers are looking good enough for us to make a start next week. There is not a lot of work we can do now to increase quality and we have thrown everything at the vines to achieve a high standard this year. It is now up to Mother Nature finish off the ripening process.

I am really happy with how things have progressed lately and it’s hard to imagine that the vineyard season will be over soon and we can start again with the next one. So far the season to date has recorded 1061 Growing Degree Days (GDD) which is slightly higher than last year and slightly less than 2008. March was a real cracker a provided just over 200 of those GDD’s. Already though the temperatures are feeling a bit cooler and the foliage is showing signs of Autumn. It is a reassuring feeling once all the fruit has been taken off and sent to the winery to be processed and then Olly can work his magic!

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Gewurztraminer, Harvest, misha's, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams

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In March Olly and I went to Tokyo. It was Olly’s first trip to Tokyo but I’ve been there many times before and just love it. We went there to spend some time with our distributor (Apurevu Trading), present a New Zealand Aromatics Masterclass for sommeliers, talk to some of the key wine media and to accompany our distributor on some key trade visits.

The New Zealand Aromatics Masterclass was a big success with many sommeliers and media attending. Hiroyuki Seino, sommelier from Apicius, helped Olly with the seminar providing a lot of information particularly about the ‘Old World’ wines that we compared with our Misha’s Vineyard examples. Seino-san also had good knowledge of New Zealand through his trip there in February, which included a visit to Misha’s Vineyard of course!

During our time in Tokyo Olly and I also met lots of the key wine media and visited some cool restaurants and bars to present our wines.

On the last evening I went to Aotea Rangi, a restaurant who now carries our range of wines, and offered samples of our wine to the regulars who were dining that evening and met some lovely expats, Judy, Kiren & Denise, who all loved the wines and gave us some great tips for where we should try and get the wines listed. Meanwhile Olly went to the NZ Bar (which is also a restaurant) in Bunkyo-ku where the only wine being served during the evening was Misha’s Vineyard!

I joined Olly at NZ Bar later in the evening and we had a wonderful time with the many guests who came to the bar especially to try the wines. I didn’t realise Japanese could drink so much! We then had fun signing bottles for people and then signing the winemaker’s wall to mark our visit! Please visit the NZ Bar Blog

Tags: Apurevu, Aromatic wines, Masterclass, Misha, Misha Wilkinson, misha's, mishas vineyard, Olly Masters, The New Zealand Bar, Tokyo wine

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Since September 2009 Misha has been writing a New Zealand focussed segment in Wine Business Magazine (WBM), an Australian wine business magazine published in Adelaide by Free Run Press under Editor Anthony Madigan. With kind permission of WBM the articles written by Misha are re-produced in PDF form below and are available for visitors to Misha’s Vineyard website to read. Please respect the copyright that applies to these articles and make any requests for re-use of the content to Wine Business Magazine, 37 Fullarton Road, Kent Town, South Australia 5067. Phone: +61 8 8362 3122.

WBM September 2009: “Neighbourly Advice”. This article reports on the biennial New Zealand Wine Exporters Forum held in Christchurch on 29th to 31st July 2009.

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WBM November 2009: “Japan – Too big, too hard or too good to miss?” A look at the opportunities for New Zealand in the Japanese wine market.

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WBM December 2009/January 2010: “On with the show – or not.” A review of the benefit of submitting wines for medal contention at NZ wine shows.

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WBM February 2010: “Is New Zealand Savvy about Aromatics?” With the success of Sauvignon Blanc around the world, are the range of New Zealand cool climate aromatics also getting enough attention?

Download PDF

To subscribe to WBM – click here

Tags: Anthony Madigan, Aromatic White Wines, central otago, central otago pinot, Free Run Press, misha's, mishas vineyard, new zealand wine, WBM, Wine Business Monthly, Wine Exporters Forum

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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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