Harvest So Far...

I have been here in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, for almost two months now, working at Craggy Range. It has been a slow, gradual ramp up to harvest. The spring and summer were wet and cold, resulting in poor fruit set (and therefore lower yields) and slow ripening (thus late ripening). As I started work on March 1, it was originally expected that harvest would kick off soon. But it's now two months later and it hasn't really hit full swing.

Perhaps a third of the grapes are in, going on half, but it's been largely Chardonnay and Merlot, neither of which are very labor intensive. Chardonnay is pressed on the large presses, put into barrels, and monitored until they are dry enough to top off and be put away for the winter. Merlot is destemmed and put into large closed-top fermentors. These tanks require a bit more work; aerative pumpovers and delestages, 2 or 3 a day, are standard for each tank during the peak of fermentation. To explain a bit more: a pumpover is when the juice from the bottom of the tank is pumped back over the top of the tank and mixed with the skins and pulp, which have congregated near the top of the tank. The pumpover mixes everything up evenly, essentially. The point of doing this isn't just to keep us interns busy. By putting the juice back onto the solids, you obtain several benefits. The solids become very hot (due to the yeast's fermentation, which produces heat), and if not mixed with juice, become so hot that it can lead to mass yeast death, causing a bit of a chain reaction and if not unchecked leading to a stuck fermentation, which is very very bad. So by mixing the tank, a homogeneous temperature is achieved. Equally important is that by mixing the tank, you increase extraction of various desirable components from the skins into the juice. Basically, at the start of fermentation, the skins are full of tannins, flavor, and color, but the juice is full of only sugar. As they soak together, some of the tannins, flavor, and color from the skins leach into the juice. But only the juice in direct contact with the skins will obtain these components. So we mix it all up, so that the far away juice at the bottom of the tank has a chance to get some of these components. A delestage accomplishes a similar objective, but is more intense. The juice is sent to another tank, until the first tank is all skins and the second is all juice, then the juice is returned to the first tank. This results in a more complete, intense mixing. We use both at Craggy on the Merlot, depending on how much of these flavors, color and tannins we desire in the wine. It's like cooking: a little salt is good, but too much ruins the food. The same is true with the components we extract from the skins, especially tannins.

So while that sounds intense, the pumpover and delestage are basically simple processes, requiring one of two people for half an hour per tank. If you are good, you can do two or three tanks at once between two people, and very little of your time is spent on cap management (a broad term encompassing pumpovers, delestages, and punch downs, another way to mix the skins and juice). Furthermore, the Merlot are fermented in large tanks, so that a lot of volume requires only minimal effort. This is the opposite of Merlot's nemesis, Pinot Noir, which is a fickle grape dealt with in a vastly different manner.

And so the Merlot is starting to wind down, and the Pinot is trickling in. We have just started to receive Pinot, from Central Otago. It has been beautiful fruit so far. I'm impressed with the clean, beautiful status of the fruit, especially considering it has been transported all of the way from the south island to reach us here in Hawke's Bay. I give credit to Adrian Baker, the winemaker, for having the eye to pick his Pinot at a fresh ripeness. In California, many winemakers wait and wait and wait until their fruit is at the height of ripeness, a type of ripeness that results in dense, dark, heavy flavors and flabby wines. Adrian picks when the fruit has a sharper balance, healthier fruit, and vibrant flavors. The wines do not taste young, they taste balanced and rich. I think it requires a certain knowledge of your vineyards and careful management of the vines (here credit is certainly due also to the vineyard crew) to time the pick perfectly and obtain fruit at the correct moment.

So the fruit arrived from down south, and we sorted through it, picking bin by picking bin, carefully removing any underripe (greenish, pinkish, light red) fruit or overripe (raisined) or diseased (a few bunches with Botrytis bunch rot) and any wings or shoulders looking funky. The perfect Pinot Bunch should be the color of ripe blueberries with perhaps a touch of purple, no pink and no raisins, clean and firm and crisp on the palate. I eat a lot of grapes as we sort to get a feel for the perfect bunch. There is much variation even within a vineyard, as some bunches within a vine or row of vines will be richer, another sharper, another flabby. This all contributes to the complexity of the wine, but sorting is necessary to remove those cluster which would contribute an undesired sort of complexity (aka funky or obvious flavors).

After the fruit passes by the sorters on the sorting table, it is conveyed up into a destemmer, and the grapes fall into a bin, via which the grapes are moved to fermentors. Sometimes, the fruit is not destemmed. The stems, Adrian tells me, can add a certain something to the palate of the final wine. The stems can contribute tannin. Of course, so do the skins and seeds, but Adrian feels that sometimes certain wines benefit from a little of the stem tannin, which has a different character.

Two kinds of fermentors are used: stainless steel tanks and wooden cuvees. The cuvees are the more interesting, being a more ancient technique, and being more risky and uncommon. As with all wood, they breathe, and allow some oxygen to enter the wine, perhaps allowing it to mature more rapidly. The wood also can add tannin and flavors to the wine, although since they have been used many times, the flavor and tannin contributions are minimal.

Meanwhile, some Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, and Cabernet Franc have passed through the winery as well. Some of these have gone to the Giants winery, where only a fraction of our volume is processed. I'll go visit that winery later and post about what goes on there later.