19 January 2009Today we blended the very first 36 Bottles Pinot Noir
Patrick and I flew down from Wellington to Dunedin yesterday morning, grabbed a rental car and headed off on our version of a boys road journey. I have to say that in mid January the scenery through Outram, Middlemarch and Ranfurly is pretty special. With the road pretty much to ourselves we made good time right through to Wanaka. An evening in the Speights Ale House, dinner, beer and watching cricket on the big screen was great relaxation before the big blending day. Pity that we had to walk back to the motel in a downpour!
Blending day dawned sunny and we decamped to the winery.
Who said blending was simple, or easy? I had thought it was stressful in the run up to harvest. Were the grapes physiologically ripe yet? Would we get picked before a frost event or the next rain front? But now we were about to construct the first 36 bottles blend from the 25+ barrels available. Suddenly everything came down to this one day!
After meeting up with Dan and Sarah-Kate, the first task was to assemble the representative samples from the barrels. During the work to take the samples we made the first cut – 2 barrels didn’t measure up.
Then we moved to the tasting room, arranged our glasses, and poured samples of each wine. Then, all was quiet as we tasted our way through the possible components and made our notes. After a few minutes we discussed our findings and formulated a strategy for trialling some possible blends.
Backwards and forwards we worked through the permutations, and a direction began to take shape. Then we had the ‘eureka’ moment, a slight tweak back on older barrel elements, a greater emphasis on newer oak portion, and what was in the glass aligned with the vision we had in our minds!
The details were quickly noted down, so that the final processing of the wine before it headed to the bottling line would be done on the bulk wine assembled from the right barrels. At the end of the blending another 2 barrels had missed the cut, so the 2008 Pinot Noir would consist of just on 6,000 bottles.
