Misha's Vineyard

Vineyard Manager Rich Williams provides an up-close view of the varietals on Misha’s Vineyard as we go through the last month of the ripening season.

Hi All, Last year the regular photo comparison updates were very popular with wine industry ‘insiders”, sommeliers, wine enthusiasts and people just generally interested in seeing how the grapes develop. We hope this provides a good pictorial view of how the various varietals develop over the last part of the season. If you wish to look back on last year – these posts are still available in our archives. As you will see, they are a lot different to last year and out of interest I weighed each bunch before I tossed them away. The weight of each bunch is listed after the photos.

Top Block
PN 5 180g
PN 115 200g
PN 667 186g
PN 5 220g
PN 667 178g
PN 777 150g
PN 5 257g
PN 115 175g
PN 777 174g

High Wire
PG 2/15 223g
PN 777 166g
PN 667 245g
RS 239 180g

Fruit Bowl
GWZ 456 165g
RS 239 130g
GWZ 456 185g

Dress Circle
PG 2/15 308g
PG Barrie 234g
PG 2/15 213g

Lake Front
PN 6 225g
PN 667 290g
PN 6 248g
PN Abel 252g

Ski Slope
PN 6 259g
SB MS 197g

House Block
RS 110 124g
RS 110 104g
RS 198.19 95g
RS 110 98g
PN 114 209g
PN 4 125g

Regards

Rich Williams

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, Gewurztraminer, Misha, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams

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It has been a while since my last update and I’m hoping everyone’s Christmas and New Years was an auspicious one… so very sorry about not keeping up to date to let you know how the vineyard is going.

Things have been moving along up here on the Bendigo terraces. But when I left for my Xmas holidays up north, I’m sure the vines were looking green and healthy. I heard rain had fallen but didn’t think much of it… when I return 68mm had fallen and gale force winds had been thrashing my poor vines around. They were in need of some real TLC.

So what happened to that great start we had? With the onset of one of the hottest flowerings on record, we have been gifted the most enormous crop of delicious grapes. That La Nina, hot summer weather that was due our way has not eventuated. Instead the summer has been grey and more windy and wet than the spring.
With every year there is a certain amount of balance needed between leaf area and fruit. Achieving this balance is needed to ripen our tasty grapes and produce great wine. Therefore off comes a large number of bunches down to one bunch per shoot. With such a sizable crop on still relatively young vines, and around 40% of nitrogen reserves are sent to fruiting parts of the vine which is why I believe some of the vines have lost their colour lately; well that and the grey days we’ve had. Now that most of the canopy management side of things has been taken care of, we are doing an all-mighty job removing bunches.

The vines have come out of their lag phase and have progressed into Veraison whereby sugar begins accumulating in the bunches and they change from green to their designated colour. We have completed the final wire tuck all round followed by a trim both sides and top to remove any lateral growth pertaining to shade. The dark side of the canopy has had a combination of lateral thinning and leaf plucking to allow light to penetrate the interior. Suckers have also been removed for the second time and the vineyard has been tidied up with a lawn mow. The crew today were 10 Misha’s crew leaf plucking, 20 Ni-van workers bunch thinning, 4 French exchange visitors with guest photographer snapping, 1 consultant milling, 1 Mainfreight truck delivering new bird nets, 1 fuel truck filling the diesel tank, a tractor trimming, and a very busy vineyard manager trying to coordinate it all.

Anyway how are the blocks looking after all that. Lake Front looking very nice with full green canopy, large bunch conformation. Ski Slope is going well with a good sized crop of Sauvignon Blanc this year. No need for much bunch thinning and all well open and trimmed nicely. Dress Circle Pinot Gris is looking quite good but will feel more comfortable after crop thinning has been done. There is plenty of fruit on here with a dark green canopy and good vine health. They are slightly wind-blown on one side of the block as with High Wire block but comes right up to Pinot Noir clones. The Riesling is looking really healthy and freshly trimmed today. Bunch size varies from quite big to very small so should be quite interesting. As with Gewurtz in the Fruit Bowl, my pick this year – I’m very happy with it! Nice and healthy with good crop of grapes, well in balance. House Block Riesling is also looking up to scratch. I was a bit worried early on there would be much fruit on these young plants but still need to do a bit of work opening things up and looking good what’s underneath. Pinot Noir down there is actually quite a bit heavier than first thought so we’ll get in there soon given the chance and cut it back to 1 bunch per shoot. Interesting to see the unusual bunches on the new clone 4 fill out. Block 2 is looking really healthy and green but a little patchy though improving on last year. Still some work to do in here. The Top Block is coming along very well. There are some real differences in clones when compared to last year. 667 and 777 seem to have produced a much smaller range than their Pommard counterparts. And YES I will provide a clonal comparison in due course. The canopy is full height with limited lateral growth this year but with large crop that is being worked on currently and coming up very well. Our High Note target is around 5 – 5.5 tonnes per hectare of which about half of the crop dropped on the ground. Looking to do nets late next week as the birds have already had a bit of a peck at a vine in the Abel and I’m not giving them the chance. Still I want everything finished and up to date before then so we’re busy, busy.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. We’ll be harvesting before we know it.
Rich

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams

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Vineyard Manager Rich Williams gives a comprehensive update on progress of the season

Hi all.

Our amazing summer continues with plenty of hot and dry sunny weather. This has meant our flowering has flown through this year in a matter of about 10 days. With high temperatures during flowering there is plenty of girth in terms of berry size. The winds have slowly increased but have not given us too much trouble as we reach full canopy height. With very little rain lately, irrigation continues almost around the clock together with plenty of nutrient additions to keep the vines in full health.

Having a bigger than normal crew over the last couple of months has allowed us to get right up to date fast. So canopies that have reached full height have now been trimmed up. This will allow smaller shoots to catch up, put energy into fruiting abilities of the vine, and give us better control so that the vines are not blown around in the wind and sustain damage. The crew has also followed up with removal of basal leaves on the dark side and any lateral growth that will interfere with light penetration to the interior of the canopy. It will be important this year not to take off too much leaving the fruit to open and prone to sunburn but just enough to allow some light and air in around the fruiting zone. So far the Lake Front Pinot Noir, Fruit Bowl Gewurztraminer, and Sauvignon Blanc have been leaf plucked with Pinot Gris next on the list. Following that there are only small pockets of blocks that should be looked at before we go on to any bunch removal and thinning work. Then bird nets go on of course to coincide with Veraison in just over a month’s time.

Fruit-set is coming together well and we are now at a stage of bunch closure, almost 4 weeks ahead on last year with an additional 100 GDD (455 so far). Pinot Noir bunch size seems to be pretty consistent to usual clonal characteristics but across the board there is a bit of variation from big to small. One of the most interesting Pinot Noir clones I have seen lately is the newly producing Clone 4 which looks like a long Merlot bunch; it started flowering early and had a wee touch of rain on the 20th of November therefore showing symptoms of collure. This means that some berries have dropped off because the stuck cap (calyptra) on the flower did not allow pollination leaving the bunch large and open.

The Pinot Gris has a very large crop with 2-3 big bunches per shoot holding large shoulders. Canopy heights are slightly smaller on the western side of the block but a significant improvement of last year. I’d like to open the Gris up a bit after the New Year and get a better idea of what is really here and perhaps do some bunch removal.
Sauvignon Blanc is looking really good again. A bit slow off the mark but looking healthy and tidy all trimmed up. It lacks the vegetative streak that Savvy normally has being on this steep sandy block and we are currently leaf plucking and lateral thinning through here. The crop seems about the same as last year but slightly bigger berry size will see us get over the 10 tonne mark. There is definitely no fruit thinning work to do so after we finish leaf plucking there won’t be much more to do on this variety.

Gewurtz is coming along great. I held off the trim as long as I could so as not to evoke the more vigorous middle section into excessive lateral growth. In the end the height of the tall shoots were reaching well over 4 metres and I was beginning to think we may need some taller posts to hold them in the wind. Now it is nicely trimmed up and has received an early leaf pluck and lateral thin. There may be another look at lateral growth in the middle section but the crop seems to look pretty well balanced, definitely not the 40g bunches we had last year. All in all, a lot more consistent canopy and bunch size.

Riesling continues to perform well. We don’t have to play much of a role in its development. Shoot growth is even and reasonably well open receiving an early trim. Bunch size hard to tell at this stage but still seems similar to last year if not slightly larger.

But overall the general outlook is positive with berry size large and even bunch conformation with a year similar to 2008 on the cards. Shoulders are also very even with main bunch and bunch number is not overly excessive. So, still all looking great and we are well up to date across the vineyard. So much in control that we are closing the gates over Christmas so that everyone can have a bit of time to relax.

So on behalf of everyone at the vineyard have a very Merry Christmas and happy and safe New Year and I’ll report back at Veraison. Take care and all the best for 2011!

Regards

Richard Williams
Vineyard Manager/Viticulturist

Tags: 2010 season, central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, Dress Circle, Limelight Riesling, mishas vineyard, pinot noir, Rich Williams

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An update from Vineyard Manager Rich Williams on how the vineyard is progressing…

Our cracker start continues from October, though the last 10 days have been quite windy. Temperatures have stayed reasonably warm and left the vines without their usual green and yellow look that were symptomatic of the spring last year.

The vines have started flowering (19th November) in the House Block and Ski Slope Pinot Noir staying in sync with the timing of budburst. With that in mind it should not be long for the rest of the varieties to be away. The start is of a similar date last year though this year we were initially a week behind and now we have caught up again. I’m seeing larger canopies across the board with less wind damage in the usual spots. There are still some issues with small vine syndrome on some blocks which bear the brunt of the wind – north end Dress Circle, north end Lake Front, High Wire by the gate – but the percentage across the board will be small and I will be dropping some fruit in these positions to get the vines to kick into gear once more. So expect bigger yields due to a great growth spurt and less wind damage.

Straight up, I have never seen a start like this one. This year is very different and I have had to have a large team on hand over the last couple of weeks. This has enabled us to catch up to where I now feel we are up to date. The young House Block took up a bit of time initially with the experienced Fulltime crew. After shoot thinning out the Pinot Noir, I decided the priority lay in the young Riesling were the vines were sulking holding up to 4 bunches per shoot and this was holding the vines back from pushing nice even shoot growth. So we made the call to do some early season bunch thinning down to 1 and 2 bunches depending on size and topped it off with a couple of Calcium-Nitrate additions the vines were away again. I’m really happy with how the Pinot Noir is looking although there is also quite a lot of fruit on these vines that will need to be looked at very soon so that the same does not happen to them.

After the young stuff, we were then making steady progress on the Ski Slope thinning out the cane pruned Sav Blanc. So far I’m satisfied with the rate of growth on these vines and cropping level seems to be low, though more even and slightly up on last year. Pinot Noir in this block is also trucking along well, more even and better wire fill than 2009/10.

I’ve had a group of casual workers shoot thinning, starting with the Lake Front Block. This block of Pinot Noir is one of the stand-outs of the season so far. Very even full height open canopy with consistent cropping level. Already we have 2 tuck wires up with shoot tips at post height already and will probably look to raise the third wire next week. The Abel clone on cane is also looking good without the vigour that it once had. From there the guys thinned out the Dress Circle Pinot Gris then the High Wire block. Shoot growth is outstanding through here. A large crop of Pinot Gris will be on the cards, with the variety producing 2 and 3 bunches a shoot.

I had a group of Ni-van workers shoot thin the Top Block Pinot Noir in a couple of days which really took the pressure off and this week the full timers have finished off the shoot thinning in the Fruit Bowl Gewürztraminer which I’m ecstatic about. A lot more even throughout this block with what looks like a larger crop than last year. The drain through the middle seems to be paying off although the already larger vines in the gully just want to grow but still really open ensuring light penetrates the canopy interior. Lastly, the Riesling is still to shoot thin but not much removal needs to be done to open it up. It will be finished off early next week along with some more wire tucking and some less than exciting removal of suckering shoots from the base of the plants. On the whole shoot thinning is all but done and 2 wires up around the board.

So on track and looking great!

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, Gewurztraminer, mishas vineyard, pinot noir, Rich Williams

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Vineyard manager Rich William’s October report.

Well, what a CRACKING start to the season!!

October has brought about unseasonably hot temperatures with less wind and less rain than normal. All this has meant the vines are enjoying some rapid shoot growth of which I have only imagined.

We couldn’t have hoped for more of a perfect start to the year. While our budburst was a week later than normal, we are well and truly ahead of where we were this time last year. The word on the street is that we’ve begun an El Nino weather circle and things certainly seem different.

We have had an unusually consistent bud break giving even growth on both apically and basally inclined positions. Hot weather has accelerated growth and on some days it seemed you could watch things growing. Over Labour weekend alone they must have surely doubled in size. This has meant we have been applying back to back sulphur sprays to keep up with the migration of erinose mite and to hinder the occurrence of powdery mildew and I am pleased with how well our new Hardi Zenit sprayer is performing.

On the flip side things are getting really busy. I would not have predicted that all our work would begin this fast and that we would be doing all the early season work at once! Our work is cut out to keep up or the even growth is going to give way to unevenness if we don’t act fast. We are progressing steadily shoot thinning through the young vines in the House Block and are due to finish the Pinot Noir by tomorrow. Shoots are already around 30 cm long and getting to the point where we need to be also doing our first wire lift to support the growth. While it is important to have shoots safely tucked up, it is also of high importance to ensure a well measured canopy by thinning to let light penetrate to the interior of the canopy reducing disease incidence and ensuring we have the best results during flowering.

At first glance already bunch size looks remarkably large and with a lot of 3rds and bunch shoulders. Bunch proximity is situated on the 3rd and 4th leaf and research points to larger bunch size the closer they are to the base of the shoot. Last year bunches were mainly situated around the 4th and 5th leaf and bunch size was reasonably small. So we will be looking closely at how our yields develop over the coming months and into flowering.

Great to meet Stephen Brook last week and show him the around the vineyard. We managed to find a nice spot in Ah Foo’s hut for a few glasses of wine and white bait patties on the barbie. Rudy from Quartz Reef was able to join us for a bit before whisking Stephen away for another adventure around the Bendigo area before he was off up to the Air NZ awards to preside the judging panel with our very own Mr Masters.

So it seems there is a bit of work ahead and less time relaxing with wine and patties…  Rich

Tags: central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, mishas vineyard, pinot noir, Rich Williams

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UK Author, Journalist and Wine Judge Stephen Brook visited Central Otago this week and enjoyed a tour and lunch at Misha’s Vineyard. The visit, hosted by Admin and Operations Manager Cassy Farmer and Vineyard Manager Rich Williams, included a tour of the spectacular Misha’s Vineyard on the Lakefront Terraces overlooking Lake Dunstan, a tasting of Misha’s Vineyard’s range of wines and lunch. The lunch platter prepared by The Lazy Dog Cafe was accompanied by Rich’s fresh caught whitebait fritters, barbecued on site at our gold miners ruins – Ah Foo’s house. Rudi Bauer of Quartz Reef wines arrived in time to enjoys some of the fare before taking Stephen on the back road across to see other vineyards on Bendigo.

Tags: Ah Foo, Bendigo, Cassy Farmer, central otago, central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams, Rudi Bauer, Stephen Brook

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Vineyard Update from Vineyard Manager – Rich Williams

September brought about a bit more wind and cooler temps which is normal for Spring here in Central Otago. It was rather frustrating trying to predict the weather in advance of applying our dose of solid fertiliser to the vineyard. Thankfully the day it was to be applied things were quite calm and the helicopter had it applied in just over 3 hours. I was really happy with how the guys from Precision Helicopters handled the job, especially with the low and high voltage power lines across the centre of the vineyard to manoeuvre around. And it was all done before the wind came up again, and with the bags of fertiliser gone there is plenty of room again in the tractor shed!

Budburst is well underway in the vineyard. We had leaves out on the 28th of September starting first in the House Block, Ski Slope, and Lake Front blocks but everything was in a full flurry in a matter of a few days. This is about a week later than normal but on par with everywhere else. I found bud initiation to be quite even this year considering the winter was not the coldest we have experienced. Normally a cold winter will provide even bud initiation and a warm one would be a little more staggered and given we had lots of fog, the cold was not as severe with fewer minus degree temperatures. And after a really warm day at the start of October there was some really good growth.

We have just installed the latest quality control measure which will take our storm water away from the shed catchment and through underneath the Fruit Bowl block and down the gully. It involved some very skilful digger work by yours truly though I would still not call myself a pro, I have definitely gained my badge and not one vine was injured in the process. I’m looking forward to gaining a better level of control over these vines from now on meaning there will be less work removing lateral growth.

Under-vine herbicide spraying is also underway when conditions allow it. We have narrowed down our spray strip to less than 60cm which will help reduce erosion problems we are having on the hill slopes. It will also mean we use less herbicide and gain additional organic matter from inter-row grasses and indigenous plants.

All but a dozen rows of metal pins have been removed and the crew has almost finished the wire dropping. Other jobs I have lined up for the month involve putting post caps on the young House Block to protect the bird nets and a general tidy up before we start shoot thinning at the end of the month. We will also be using our new double row foliar sprayer in about 10 days time with the vines first application of sulphur. Somewhere in there I hope to take a few days away from the vineyard for a few days on the wild West Coast white baiting. I’m looking forward to the break before the busy growing season. Thankfully no frosts to think about!

Tags: Buburst, central otago, central otago pinot, mishas vineyard, Rich Williams, Vineyard

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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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Keeping in Balance

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.

It hasn’t seemed to have much of an impact on the soil and through tissue analysis it has been shown that the vines are still deficient in it. This can have repercussions on growth as it is a major factor in photosynthesis.

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.

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.

Tags: mishas vineyard, Rich Williams, Robin Dicey, the Albrecht system

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Vineyard Manager Rich Williams managed to file this vineyard report before he headed down the the bottling plant to join Cassy, Sue and Olly on ‘Quality Control’ duties for the 2009 Pinot Noir bottling.

Winter pruning has progressed very well this month. With the completion of the House Block, we have moved through the Lakefront Block, Highwire Block, and Fruitbowl. We then moved up into Block 2 and The Top Block – from Pinot Noir Clone 5 through the Pinot Noir 115 and Pinot Noir 667. The vines are now a year older than the earlier ones we have been working on and so we have had to reach for the loppers as the vines are that much bigger and harder on hands. I am still really happy with the quality of the pruning so far and we are achieving pretty much 100% wire-fill with some exception to the ‘Horse’s Head’ area by the main gate where the vines have been held back by wind and there is the odd dead plant to replace. In this situation we have laid down canes from neighbouring plants to temporarily fill the gaps. There was some physical wind damage to plants at the top of the Top Block and these plants have been rectified by renewing the old damaged cordon with a newly laid cane to replace it.

I would estimate we are about 3 or 4 weeks out from finishing before we move on to other tasks such as dropping wires and removal of metal pins. The shorter canopy has enabled us to do away with running through a tractor mounted barrel pruner and instead we have done a single pass laying down replacement canes and spur pruning as we go. We will also do away with needing to run a sweeper attachment to tidy up as the guys are keeping things reasonably clean in the under vine area. This should mean reduced costs for pruning this year with added time spent getting the vines looking up to speed for the coming season. With the money saved this year we can hopefully justify some electric pruners for next winter… or the following Christmas!

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

Tags: central otago pinot, Central Otago Pinot Noir, mishas vineyard, Pruning, Rich Williams

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