Harvest photos but in a cool web 2.0 kinda way

Photos from harvest

Sorry that posting has been so light! I have been furiously studying for my final exams for Microbiology and Scientific Statistics as part of my Wine Science studies. In the meantime check out some photos from harvest!

Promise to be back to regularly scheduled programming soon!

It's Over...

So my internship is finished at Kosta Browne and back to the reality of being a wine science student. What an amazing ride - three months of hard yakka, intense learning experiences and amazing friendships.

So what did I learn? I learnt that the skills that made me a good advertising sales person are not necessarily the skills that make you a good wine maker. In advertising sales, creativity is king. In winemaking, being able to carry out a task the same way, every time is the most important thing. In advertising sales, very few mistakes are uncorrectable - it is pretty easy to re-submit a proposal if you put an extra zero in the wrong place. In winemaking, an extra zero can ruin tens of thousands of dollars of wine that can not be replaced. In advertising sales, attention to detail helps. In winemaking it doesn't help -- it is EVERYTHING.

I also got to see a few myths exploded. For example, it has been said that being a good winemaker is like being a good chef. It couldn't be further from the truth. A chef has twenty or more times a night to get a dish right; a winemaker has only one chance a year to get it right. To top it off, he will often not know for sure if he got it right or not for a year or so as the wine evolves in the barrel.

What I really learnt was that I love this job and I definitely made the right decision to pursue this career. I am already chomping at the bit for my next harvest, starting in April, at Felton Road in New Zealand.

The best summation of the wine making process I have heard

From a post at the eRobertParker forums:-

As you now know Jim, wine making is 40% moving things around, 50% cleaning stuff and 10% drinking beer.

Damn straight!

And now the end is near....

The end of harvest is upon us, so there is less to do out on the crush-pad, and there is now time to check in on things that have escaped our attention for the past few months. Here I am on the top of the 2006 barrels, preparing to sample from all of them so we can run some tests on them in the lab.

Bottling the 2006 wines will be upon us in January so we need to check in on them all and see where they all are in terms of pH, volatile acidity, titratable acidity and SO₂. All of these numbers are important in terms of "barrel health", so to speak, and also impact blending decisions. For example, you may have a target pH of somewhere between 3.5 and 3.7 for your finished wine in bottle. If you have a couple of lots with pH's around 3.8 you want to find a home for them with lots that have pH's that are much lower.

Checking SO₂ levels is a key test with bottling around the corner. SO₂ is an important preservative that ensures the wine remains stable during its time in the bottle - i.e. no "in bottle" re-fermentation by any bad yeasts or bacterial spoilage. Most winemakers want S0₂ levels to be in the early thirties parts per million before bottling so running a free SO₂ test in the lab will let us know how much more we need to add. Adding too much SO₂ at once can also "shock" the wine (the wine hides its flavor and aromas) for a while so it is much more preferable to slowly raise SO₂ levels reaching your target just before it goes into bottle.

Next week, I am going to be spending a lot of time in the lab helping out our oenologist so I will post more about the tests we run at Kosta Browne then!

2004 Sine Qua Non "Poker Face" Syrah (California, USA)

I had the luck to have this wine alongside the Sine Qua Non "Into The Dark" at the Jemrose Vineyards harvest party.

This wine, along with being my first experience of Sine Qua Non, was also my first Robert Parker "100 Point Wine".

Decadent is the perfect word. Rich, lush, black fruit, pepper, violets, coffee, meat and some toasty oak notes on the nose - what a heady mix! The darkest of dark purple in the glass. The palate was immensely lush, yet focused, building and building up to a crescendo of fruit - an explosion in your mouth, finally finishing with some focused acidity.

I could get used to this - unfortunately my position on the wait list probably won't come up for 10 years or more!

Score: 96+ points
Price: $400 or so (Winecommune.com)

2004 Sine Qua Non "Into The Dark" Grenache (California, USA)

Had at the Jemrose Vineyards Harvest Party (more on the party later) - a very generous gift from Russell Bevan!

O-M-G, this is my first ever "Sine Qua Non" - a cult winery that is impossible to find and has a wait list of over 5 years - and it lived up to the hype.

This is a full throttle wine, it comes at you with pure force of personality, yet it is still incredibly graceful and lithe. Imagine an athlete that is a dual gold medalist in gymnastics and weight lifting!?!

Black cherry, licorice and smoke with silky, fine grained tannins. Must be some big time alcohol in there by no heat on the palate. Color was a spectacular deep black-purple. Mouth feel was like sucking on velvet.

Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy...

Score: 98 points
Price: $250 or there abouts (WineCommune)