Apr
13
Vintage 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized
Phew! Another vintage almost over… we still have Petit Verdot burbling away in the vats, but now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All those days and nights, plunging, plunging, plunging… finding that your ferments have started racing and are getting bloody hot, just when there is a power outage on a 46 degree day, so we can’t run the cooling system… now thats stress!
People keep asking me what vintage was like this year, and they ask this with a serious and concerned look on their face. After all the doom and gloom the industry was spouting earlier this season, about heat damage, smoke taint, etc… well, I’m pleased to say we have no smoke taint (too far away from the fires) and that I reckon it was a cracker of a vintage! Sure, yields were down, but that’s more to do with conditions last year, when this year’s baby bunches were being formed, deep within the bud tissue for this year. You could see at flowering that there just weren’t going to be as many grapes on each bunch. There just wasn’t a space for them on the bunch frames. So it was never going to be a big yielding year, which is fine by us! We aim for around 2 -2.5 tonnes to the acre at the best of times.
It is true that some varieties were adversely affected by the heat. The Gamay never stood a chance; a variety that dislikes normal summer heat at the best of times, the grapes turned into bunches of raisins overnight, after a couple of days of over-40 degree heat. So no 2009 Gamay, unfortunately.
The viognier struggled a bit, but the wine we made is looking pretty smart… currently it is settling, then a bit of fining, and then it will be ready to bottle. Smells fantastic; pears, peaches, citrus… mmm.
The biggest problem with the heat was defoliation. The sangiovese lost a fair bit of leaf, almost overnight, so we had to drop half of what was a considerable crop load after veraison, to kickstart the ripening process, which had stalled a bit. In the end, we picked some very nice fruit, and the resulting wine has a fantastic aroma of wild cherries… I shall be watching it over the coming year with great interest as it matures in barrique.
The shiraz and tempranillo look brilliant - super intense colour and aroma, without being overripe. A really good mouthfeel already at this early stage. The merlot… well, let me rave about the merlot. I reckon that merlot is underrated badly in this country. This year, the merlot in our vineyard just cruised through the heat; didn’t lose any leaf, didn’t get scorched…we picked some of the best merlot grapes we have ever grown. They were perfectly ripe - the seeds were dark brown and nutty, fantastic intense blackcurrant lolly flavour, no shrivel at all. And the wine we pressed last week was so dark, so perfumed, so intense in every way. If we could grow everything like that, I’d be very happy!
So we are all smiles up here. Very busy, with still some ferments going; wine to rack and transfer to new barriques, malo to monitor… but soon we will have all the wines safely in barrels, tucked up for the winter. Then it will be time for a holiday! (or, more realistically, to sow our crops… no peace for the wicked!)
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