Vines in the August fog

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.

Neil Kinsey & Rich

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”!

Rich Williams, Vineyard Manager and Robin Dicey, our Viticultural ‘Godfather’, have just undertaken some very detailed analysis of our soils across our eight different vineyard blocks and the very informative soil test results are now back. Ideally soil should comprise 25% water, 25% air, 45% minerals and 5% organic matter with the ideal soil pH should be between 6 – 6.5. In terms of our minerals, we have known all along that our soils are very low in Magnesium and nutrients have been applied for a few years now to try and bring it back into line.

The vineyard land pre-planting

We are now using the Albrecht system and the way it works is to put the main soil nutrients back in balance with one another so that these forms of nutrients are not locked up. These main soil nutrients are Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium and Sodium. The Base Saturation of these nutrients changes depending on how much organic matter we have in the soil (which in our case is very low) and soil pH. Because our soils are less able to hold as much as they could, it is very important we at least have our base nutrients in balance so that the plants are able to take them up when they need them.

Also it seems our soils are very low in trace elements such as Boron, Zinc and Copper. The first two have some of the biggest influences on flowering and pollination than any other so it is important we have them in the soil.

Digging Irrigation Trenching

What the test results have shown is that we are not far out of balance of our major nutrients on the whole. Some blocks are a little more out of balance than others. i.e. the Lake Front block is very well balanced in base elements however it is a bit out of balance in trace minerals; the Ski Slope is quite out of balance on the base elements and a little out on trace minerals; the Fruit Bowl/High Wire block is very good on base elements but not so with the trace minerals, etc. Getting these all back into line is key to continued quality in the wine.

We are about to undertake this long-term program to increase our soil fertility and bring all the blocks into perfect balance and maintain good stewardship of our land which is farmed according to the certified Sustainable New Zealand program.

Rich Williams

Pruned vines on Lakefront

Broken strainer posts and tie backs are also being fixed as we go, but for some reason I seem to be doing most of the digging. I must work out who is breaking these and pass them the shovel!

Soil test results are due to arrive back from the testing facility in the US. This system was designed by Neal Kinsey which is based around accurate soil analysis and is used to correctly balance the nutrient levels in the soil as well as providing a better nutrient range for soil biology to thrive. Fertiliser recommendations will accompany the test results for the rates of nutrients we will require which will be spread by helicopter.

Also on the list of things to do is to find a source of water for the possible planting of native Kanuka down the windy side of the Dress Circle. I am also spending time accurately mapping the area to determine the number and situation of plants we will require.

That’s it for July – I’m being seconded for bottling line duties.

Rich

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!

Clonal Layout 10th April 2010

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

Gewurz ready to pick

Andy checking the grapes

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.

Another stunning April in Central Otago

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.

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

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