I've done a photo of everyone else in a tank...

So I guess it is only fair to do mine. I am also rocking the traditional harvest beard at the moment (it is unlucky to shave during harvest, it angers the gods and stuff like that).

Fighting Frost New Zealand Style

The biggest danger from these sub zero overnight temperatures is not damage to the fruit (the sugars in the berries lowers their freezing point far enough below zero to not be a worry) but the vine going "night-night". Two things can happen, the first catastrophic, the second kind of forcing your hand.

The catastrophe is frost - if the water inside the cells of the leaves freeze, the leaves will immediately die. Remember that water when frozen expands; the pressure from the expanding ice bursts the cell walls open and thus instantly kills them. Without leaves the vine can not photosynthesize any more sugars and flavor compounds and the grapes will not mature further. A real bummer if you still have "green" fruit.

The second scenario is that the vine believes it is now winter and starts going into dormancy. This process is less catastrophic since it is slower - leaves will gradually turn yellow, red and then fall off. A vine can still ripen fruit (although at a much slower rate) after 50% of its leaves have senesced and it may take a week or more to get to this point. Enough cool weather and this scenario is inevitable.

So what can you do? In New Zealand, some grape growers may water their vines when there is a frost warning - this is a double-edged sword since the water may prevent the frost from setting but the vine will then take up that water and dilute the flavors that it has spent all summer developing. Not many growers of grapes destined for premium wines would employ this tactic (one would hope).

The much more expensive option is to create wind. In Gibbston one often sees what look like windmills - but instead of harnessing wind to generate energy, these bad boys generate wind from energy. Usually hooked up to temperature sensors that will turn them on anytime that the temperature approaches zero, the wind they create moves enough air to prevent frost from setting in. At Peregrine we don't have wind machines so we need temporary ones - otherwise known as helicopters! Every morning when there is a frost warning, two or three helicopters show up at 4am to fly over the vineyard until 8am or so, again generating enough air flow to stop frost damage. Gnarly stuff!

Winery Recycling Tip #316: How to reuse beer bottles

Who needs expensive fermentation bungs when remnants of recent beer fines can do the trick!

NB: A beer fine (usually a six-pack) is assessed on the winery staff for making stupid mistakes - like for forgetting to turn the cooling on a tank of cold-soaking pinot. How else do you expect the beer fridge to remain stocked over harvest!

The Germans are wimps. This is REAL cool climate winemaking!

The danger of making wine below the 45th Parallel was apparent yesterday when we showed up to work at 8am and the thermometer read 1° C. And it was snowing too - the temperature the whole day never got above 8° C. You don't know how cold it can get on a crush pad with water spraying everywhere - boy, oh, boy!

With the grapes still a couple of weeks away from physiological maturity this is going to be a race against Mother Nature. As my flatmate might say "this *%@# ain't going to get ripe!". Here's hoping for the best.

Anyone can dig a tank but how many can do "crow" pose at the same time

Yoga teacher and harvest veteran, Elizabeth Keys, digging out a Pinot tank. Om shanti.

How to look fab and graceful when digging tanks

Ummm, not so much...

You say Pinot Grigio, I say Pinot Gris!

Last week we were bombarded with Pinot Gris - the "Grey Grape" and favorite quaff of housewives the world over. While being made from the same grape, in France the wine made from Pinot Gris is called Pinot Gris (surprised?) while in Italy it is named Pinot Grigio. Since the Italian style is more fruity, New World producers usually refer to their versions as Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio depending on how fruity their winemaking style is.

Normally Pinot Gris is processed like most whites - immediately de-stemmed, crushed, pressed and then usually fermented in stainless steel tank (for some creaminess some winemakers may also ferment a small portion of the final blend in barrel). However Pinot Gris may also be left on its skins for a short period before pressing - the juice picks up some pinkish-grey coloring (which will fall out during fermentation owing to its instability) but it also develops some floral characters which is appealing.

Below are two press loads of Pinot Gris that we processed at the same time last week. The first press held grapes that were left on their skins overnight and the other was full of grapes that were pressed immediately after crushing.



Notice the very different coloration. I will let you know about any different flavors and aromas that develop after fermentation - I know I am excited whether you are or not is another matter!

Harvest Meals

Other than a good nights sleep, a hearty meal and some booze are the things one craves during harvest. I have been very lucky at Peregrine and Felton Road to have some great meals and some tasty wines to help those long days go a little quicker.

At Felton Road, Nigel Greening (the owner), would cook lunch every day from mainly wild produce. It is well known amongst local farmers that if you show up with a hogget or a deer you might get some wine in return! The front office at Peregrine take turns to cook dinner for the harvest crew on the long days which is greatly appreciated.

To get a feeling for some of the amazing food we have been lucky to partake in, here is a recipe for a lunch that Nigel prepared for us. Paired perfectly with a 2005 Pegasus Bay Riesling!

Green curry of Blue Nose

Green Curry Paste
4 chilli
1 onion
2 Lemon Grass
1 inch of ginger
1 oz fresh corriander
3 Garlic cloves
1 TSP ground coriander
1 Tsp Cumin
2 strips of lime zest
1 Tsp Blachan
1 Tsp Salt
2 tablespoons water

The curry

1 tin Coconut milk or 2/3rds tin coconut cream.
water to make up to 600ml
45-60ml Nam pla
1 tsp palm sugar
1 lemon, Juiced
3 lime leaves
Blue Nose fillets (or any firm white fish)
Baby aubergines, bamboo shoots, veg, whatever you fancy.
a bunch of Basil
Green chilli's: 1 or 2 seeded and chopped.
Green Curry Paste as above


Fry the paste in a little oil for about 5 minutes.
Add the stock ingredients and cook for 2 minutes.
Add fish, and veg and cook gently for 4 minutes.
Add basil and chilli at the end and serve.

How to spend $1000 in five minutes at a winery

Above is a packet of dehydrated lactobacilli - our little microbial friends who turn malic acid into lactic acid.


This is five minutes later - five malolactic inoculations ready to rock - at the cost of $1000 a packet, these are some expensive measuring jugs!

Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is the process where lactobacilli convert malic acid, which is more acidic, into the less acidic lactic acid. This lowers the pH of the wine and also creates a rounder mouthfeel - lactic acid is the main acid in milk! Malolactic Fermentation is a must for all red wines and most whites - your steely unoaked chardonnays and rieslings are prevented from going through malolactic fermentation to retain more "crispness" in the mouth and keep the acid at a palate cleansing level.

For years scientists couldn't understand what was in it for the lactobacilli since no energy is released when malic acid is converted into lactic acid. Very recently however it has been shown that the electrochemical gradient of having a higher pH inside the bacterial cell (all the malic acid) and the lower pH outside the cell (the wine now having lactic acid instead) is high enough for the bacilli to use it as a generator (think of a battery - the voltage is the electrical gradient between the two terminals). Amazing, huh? Life will always find a niche!

Random Harvest Photo

Sophie Matthews rocking the morning Pinot Noir punchdowns.

Day 3: Gewürztraminer

After almost two days on the skins we drained the free run Gewürztraminer juice out of tank and then pressed the left over skins for the rest of the juice. As you can see the free run has this "pinky" tinge to it from its time on the skins. As soon as it appears it is gone. The picture below is from just an hour later.

Once we sent all the free run juice to tank we then pressed the skins in this massive press which slowly inflates and deflates its bladder over a two hour period to extract more juice without extracting any bitter or vegetal flavors in the seeds or skins. The blended free run and pressed Gewürztraminer juice will settle overnight in tank and tomorrow we will rack (transfer from one tank to another) the clear juice so we can then filter the solids (suspended proteins etc) that will settle at the bottom for the remaining juice. As well as making more wine, this last bit of juice has a lot of valuable complexity through its contact overnight with the solids. Hopefully today I will get some photos of the wicked filtration machine we use!

After a couple of days at Peregrine

Busy, Busy, Busy. First thing I learned on the job is that 12 hour days are not just common here, they are expected. Boy, was that right. A 12 and a 13 hour days straight off the bat - and when you are doing manual labor you get tired to the bone. Sleep feels very deserved.

It has been enjoyable working on some new varieties of grapes for me. Yesterday we processed Gewürztraminer - a very aromatic German variety. The flavors that most associate with this variety is lychees and turkish delight (rosewater flavored jellied sweets). The berries are a mauvy-grey color - not quite white, not quite red. It is also best tasting wine grape I have ever had - extremely moreish and very hard to stop eating when lunch is hours away! One thing about getting to eat wine grapes is that you can never enjoy table grapes again - they are so bland and watery in comparison.

Gewürztraminer is an interesting grape to make wine from. For every white I can think of it is very important to get the juice off the skins as soon as possible after crushing (despite its violent name, it is actually a rather gentle breaking of the skins so that the juice can flow from the berries) because the skins often have unwanted phenolics (some of them being green, vegetal flavors - one common one being capsicum). Gewürztraminer, on the other hand, has very desirable floral . and thus after crushing and destemming the juice that has been released from the berries and the skins are both pumped into a tank for a few days to intermingle (official winemaking term being skin contact). This allows the aromatic compounds in the skin that is so prized in Gewürztraminer to leach slowly into the juice over a couple of days.

Today we will press the juice in a wine press (a bladder gently squeezes the rest of the juice that remains in the skins) and then put all the juice into a tank for fermentation. I'll try and get a photo of the Gewürztraminer being pressed so you can get a better idea.

Gewürztraminer is often a great pairing for Asian food. The little bit of sweetness from the residual sugar cuts the spiciness and the aromatics often complement the pungent aromas of Asian cuisine. A Thai Green curry is a classic match. Personally I enjoy a chilled Gewürztraminer on a lovely summers day, sitting under an umbrella with a wicked selection of antipasti. Try some with your chorizos, salumis and anchovies - Gewürztraminer just laps up all that fatty goodness!

Rolling with the punch(downs)es

I got some tough news today. This has been a weird harvest in Central Otago as almost all the whites are harvested and most of the Pinot Noir is still on the vine - usually it is the other way around. Normally when it comes time for all the hard work on Pinot Noir in the winery the whites are ready for their pressing, leading to a ton of work to be done and many late nights. However since almost all the whites are already in there will be no time pressure on the staff when it finally comes time to work the Pinot Noir hard. The ramifications of this is that Felton Road no longer has enough work for me. Such is the life of a harvest intern... Que syrah, syrah.

On the bright side, starting today I am working at Peregrine wines, a larger winery in the Gibbston Valley that primarily produces Pinot Noir from vineyards in both the Gibbston Valley and the Cromwell basin (of which Bannockburn is at the southern end). In addition to Pinot Noir, Peregrine also makes Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. The winery itself has won many design awards (see picture above) and I will post some photos soon.