January 2004
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Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents....... After the festivities were over and the guests departed it was off for a few days on the Otter Trail in order to work off all that Christmas turkey. J-C, Pascale and Sarah went and had a great but exhausting time. They even managed to spot an otter.
The vineyards were in a perfect pre-harvest state. Manicured and de-weeded to perfection. J-C dropped a bit of the older Syrah crop to ensure the rest ripened happily. Just the bunches on any lateral and water shoots. Also we did some tipping in the Mourvedre to get them putting all their energy into ripening grapes instead of shooting shoots, and hopefully this will help even out ripeness. Overall the harvest looked good, but the berries are seem a bit bigger than last year so we may consider making some saignee on some of the Syrah to keep the quality at the same level as last year. Fortunately there had been much less wind damage than last year and so the canopy was less patchy at the exposed row ends. This was not because there had been any less of the hot North East wind, but because of the denser leaf cover of the older vines, and the fact that they were pruned with more bearers. It was with baited breath that we waited for veraison to start. The temperatures on the Tulbagh valley floor were soaring into the high thirties. Although typically our elevated vineyard is 5 degrees cooler, we were a bit concerned. If the heat wave continued after veraison sugars would soar rapidly and we would have the choice of harvesting at very high sugar levels (and high potential alcohol) if we wanted phenolic ripeness or harvesting at low sugars but with a lot of greenness still in the pips. Not ideal at all. This was the choice facing a few other producers. By the 12th of Jan veraison was well under way on some Tulbagh farms and with the temperatures over 40 degrees some days sugar ripeness was coming fast. Most non organic vineyards use a cyanide based application to trigger bud break. Once bud break occurs it is easy to predict within a few days when harvest will occur. By doing this farmers can ensure an even bud break and a well ordered harvest. The heat wave had hit at the wrong time for farmers who had woken their vines too soon.. Long hang time was going to cause massively high alcohols and low acids and short hang time would cause greenness and bitter tannins. A tough choice which can only be mollified by cellar techniques such as adding large amounts of acid and taking out alcohol through reverse osmosis. This sort of intervention is something we would not consider, so we waited anxiously for signs of cooler weather. By the 30th of Jan we were into veraison and the weather started changing. We even had some drizzle and low cloud. The effect was an increase in humidity and we were now worried that as the wind dropped and the hot damp days continued we would be subject to higher disease pressure. The main reason Tom and John chose the vineyard site was the almost constant cool dry breeze from the South East. Sometimes this breeze turns fierce and as hot as a hair dryer as it turns North East and comes racing down over the mountains from the Klein Karoo but at least is rarely still and humid. Hopefully our breeze would not let us down at this the most crucial time of the year. In the cellar we were busy getting ready for the impending harvest. There were a few adjustments made to the equipment. The crusher frame needed to be reinforced as it had let us down last year. We invested in a power lift to transfer full bins from the upper to the lower cellar, as well as a reinforced table to stand the full bins on. This would enable us to fill the settling tank with free run and pressed juice under gravity whether the fermentation bin was in the lower or upper part of the cellar during maceration. Because we are using very small fermentation bins of only 500 litre volumes we can punch down by hand and move them round the cellar using the pallet jack and the power lift. We will be creating many very small batches of wine from different areas of our own vineyard and many small amounts of bought in batches from many other vineyards in the region. The idea is to experiment as much as possible while we are still in our infancy and when we are producing greater volumes we will have had a great deal of experience to fall back on. We may even have a clue of what works and what doesn't. This of course is massively labour intensive for the amount of wine produced and would be thought of as totally un-commercial under normal circumstances. For example we reckon it will take 4 man hours to do one punch down on 25,000 litres of wine in 50 separate bins spread out across the cellar floor at an average of 5 minutes per punch down. Punch downs would be happening every 6 hours every day of the week during fermentation and maceration, so we will need some help. We were fortunate to have Pascale involved and we were delighted that one of the vineyard team, John, was keen to learn and be fully involved in the cellar. You never know even Sarah the book keeper may be press ganged. We had also decided to experiment with fermentation in some brand new 500L open top barrels. These are pretty expensive bits of kit so we bought 10 just to add to the mix, but they double up as maturation vessels. When they arrived they looked stunning. We also got the cooling guys in again to put the big blowers into the main barrel cellar. The main barrel cellar will be full by the end of the harvest and it was starting to look very special as the barrels arrived. We were not only buying brand new but sourcing second hand barrels we could really rely on. We lined up some second fill barrels from such reliable names as Rustenberg, Topaz and Tokara as well as from Chateau Margaux and Chateau Palmer which will add a bit of class to the cellar if nothing else.
In the meantime the TMV team were taking on all comers in a 6 a side cricket tournament with Pierre and Neville from Rijk's Ridge, Kevin from the Wild Olive Farm and a cussing Lebanese guy (who was our sledging wicket keeper). J-C showed his misspent youth by managing to clean bowl 2 batsmen from the Tulbagh Coop Winery and to bat through his whole innings of 5 overs before almost breaking his neck trying to catch somebody on the boundary.
Pascal and J-C were also busy learning the rules of the road for trucks as they both need to pass their tests if they are to be trucking in grapes from their specially selected sites all round the area. They booked themselves in for the road test and will hopefully pass this. They also spent several days visiting the blocks of grapes we're buying in. They all look great except one small block that was a bit vigorous so decided to try to swap these out if they can find better elsewhere. Just as the grapes started to turn, on the 20th of January Mrs. G-W had her long awaited baby. Another big bouncy boy (number 3). This time, having racked their brains twice before over names, they went out to left field and called him Cosmo Benedict. Great name for a wine maker but maybe he will not thank his parents in years to come if he ends up scrumming down against the All Blacks.
Fingers crossed that the weather gets cooler and stays dry. We don't want a storm now just as we hit harvest, and we don't want any more scorching sun. Copyright © 2000 Tulbagh Solutions. All rights reserved. |
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