A real foamer in the cellar for Martin Moore 3 May 2005

What a pleasure to be able to sit back briefly and contemplate the past harvest. I have said it before but I will say it again: Easy it was not, and at the end of it I feel tired and drained. In this I am not alone – colleagues at other wineries tell me they are equally exhausted. But with the tiredness also comes a sense of achievement, when you know what has been captured in the tanks and vats is excellent, despite the vagaries of the weather during harvesting. (I do not agree with those pundits who claim that the inconsistent ripening affected the quality of the grapes. To which I can only say: perhaps where you are, but definitely not here in the Durbanville hills.)

An unusual occurrence in the cellar this vintage was the number of tanks that started foaming. Now foaming in itself is not unusual. In any given year there will be one or two tanks doing that. It was the number of tanks doing so this year that was unusual. For most things in life there is a reason. Foaming is no exception. It is usually caused by high protein levels in the must. If you think back, you might recall we started the season with two heavy thunderstorms that released large quantities of nitrogen, a compound for amino acid which in turn is a compound for protein ... and there's your explanation.

Our way of stopping foaming is probably somewhat unconventional, one you won't find in any text book. I picked it up during my years at the KWV from my erstwhile mentor, that remarkable German winemaker Wili Hacker, who would drop a scoop of cream into a foaming tank of white wine, and voilà, it would subside like the Sea of Galilee. When confronted by a fermenting tank of pinotage with the purple foam cascading down the sides I discovered in my desperation that it works for red wine, too.

I am reminded of the time we had a young Australian winemaker working with us one harvest. Somehow our remedy for foaming fascinated him. Once, as I was accompanying a group of visitors through the cellar, he shouted excitedly in that broad accent of his: ‘Hey, Martin, we've got ourselves a real foamer here, mate. I reckon we will have to chuck a whole cow into this one!’