25 April 2010Vintage 2010 - Being a Vintage 'Intern'

Currently I’m in the middle of an ‘intern’ vintage role with our wine makers at Maude Wines. Being rather older than the last time I did this and not necessarily that much wiser it has been a bit difficult getting back up to speed with the hard yakka of a full sized winery vintage cellarhand’s life.  But its all been more positive than negative.

The good things from the first week – seeing my own grapes in the fermenter quietly cold soaking, and all those lovely fruit aromas; being right on site to make critical decisions regarding the fermentation of our Pinot Noir; finding out (again) that vintage work is really good at helping shed the kilos – it’s the best diet – eat as much as you can because the physical work load will burn off anything you can eat and then some; great people to work with, dinners made by S-K (she is a fantastic cook).

The not so good things – feeling stuffed at the end of the day, being so tired that my thought of writing something each day went out the window for the whole of the first week.  But now I’m into week two I’m feeling up to speed.

So with a bit of luck I can write a little something on each of the remaining few days as a vintage ‘intern’.

PS –fermentation of the wine that will become ’36 bottles’ Pinot Noir 2010 is now well and truly ‘kicking’; and the aromas and flavours are very nice.  Fingers crossed!

11 February 2010Wine tasting in Johnsonville

Patrick and I  attended the February meeting of the Cellar Club last night and presented all the wines that we have produced to date.  These were the Pinot Gris 2009 and 2008 and the Pinot Noir 2008.  There was a good and knowledgable crowd in attendance, which made for a very enjoyable evening.  It was also good to catch up with folk we know from other tasting circles and wine options competitions.

The wines were all well received; thanks everyone for the kind comments.  The Pinot Gris section definitely generated plenty of discussion regarding the diversity of approaches still evident in many NZ Pinot Gris.  Consumers find it a problem not knowing how dry or sweet a Gris is going to be, unlike Chardonnays or Sav Blancs which have standard styles.  But the balance of bright primary aromas, palate texture, great acid backbone and a hint of residual sugar definitely hit the spot for many tasters.  I wish I had a recording of the comment "The 2008 has to be the best NZ Pinot Gris I have ever tasted."  Thank you that man!

The Pinot Noir even has me getting excited.  It's been a few weeks (2 months?) since I last tasted it and the aromas, flavours and textures are definitely opening up.  Many commented on the cherry, plum and chocolate / mocha and spice notes.  So pleased that many enjoyed it.

Thank you to the Johnsonville Cellar Club for having us along as part of the nights events, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and we hope that they will have us back in the future.  Any one for 'Pinot 2010 blending trial' evening next year?

2 February 2010Road Trip Day 2

The outstanding weather in the last few days continues.  It has been another super day with temperatures getting up to 31 to 35 degrees Celsius in the vineyards of the Cromwell / Bendigo area.  Crossing our fingers that this carries on as the end of last year was very cool, carrying on the very cold winter of 2009.

Anyway today found Jane and I in the warehouse.  The sticker application wasn't all done yesterday, so we were back to finish it off with a little help from the warehouse staff to move pallets, open boxes and apply stickers.  Jane now has this application of stickers down to a fine art and we whizzed along.

I'm not sure whether to be happy that I was in a temperature controlled warehouse out of the heat or unhappy that I wasn't enjoying weather that hasn't really been a feature for most of our Wellington 'summer' this year.

However by mid afternoon we had done 5 pallets (an awful lot of bottles!) of Pinot Noir with 'Recommended by WineState' stickers.  A great effort that had to be rewarded by going home and tucking into some delicious Central Otago cherries and another beer on the deck (suitably slip, slap, slopped and wrapped against the sun!).

Dinner has been a bbq'd (gas, not charcoal) leg of lamb, marinated and butterflied.  In fact I think I'm going to have to share this receipe from Jane's sister in law, as it is just so delicious.  And the bottle of our Pinot Noir we shared just seems perfect with it at the moment as well.