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Selected extracts from the harvest diary of Gary Jordan This diary was presented over the length of the 2006 harvest – until sickness prevented Gary from reporting on the last few days....
The first three days Day 1: The 2006 harvest at Jordan began on 3rd February, with the harvesting of a small east-facing vineyard of Sauvignon Blanc (clone 159), a week later than last year. SE winds and cooler weather with cloud cover were ideal conditions for our first day of harvest. It was the first year that we have started on a Friday and the ten tonnes harvested were enough to wet the press and test the equipment to ensure that everything was operating correctly before the vintage began in full force from the 6th February.Day 2: Monday 6th February 2006 Sjaak (another Jordanite, since he joined us in 1999, almost 7 years ago) and Robert Starke were in the cellar just as the first load arrived. “Man, its lekker to make wine at Jordan”, I hear coming from the press! Jordan will be a “United Nations” this year, as harvest interns join us from all over the world. From Austria, Simone Jordan joins us for 3 months as a newly qualified winemaker with her own winery in the “Weinviertel” district, NW of Vienna. Having spent 5 years in California, Martin Smith will also be spending the harvest with us, as will Lucinda Heyns, a final year student from Namibia. Tim Hook spent last vintage with us before spending time in the Channel Islands, and has just returned for the vintage. Danie Steytler (jnr) will be spending a few weeks here before heading off to Bordeaux, just as Martin Scheiber leaves the Tirol to fly south to Jordan for a month. 19h30
Day 3: Tuesday 7th February: Such a complex concentration of flavours flowed out of the first press this morning. Tropical fruit, honey dew melon, limey citrus – you name it, we could find it! The cellar was like the stage for the opening night of Macbeth, (and I am not referring to the state of extreme cleanliness when I think of the lines “out, out damned spot”) – I am referring to the “stage mist or smoke” as we tried out our new dry-ice experiment! All it takes is a scoopful of dry-ice and the press is instantly blanketed with carbon dioxide. “Oh that’s old hat” says Tim, “we used to add dry ice to our drinks while watching cricket at Newlands!” At – 78 degrees celcius …. Yikes! I spent an hour taking vineyard samples, ending up at Block 11. ‘Windhoek’ (Windy corner) is the name the vineyard workers have given it. Somehow it sounds much nicer than Block 11. The flavours are a complex green fig and spicey flavour, but I wish there had been more bunches! Having carefully counted bunches in our different vineyard blocks earlier in the season, and estimating bunch weights based on our historical data, our Sauvignon Blanc volumes in 2006 seem to be much lower than 2005. Windhoek (beer) is what we started with to wet our dry throats at the end of the day. A blind tasting followed and one of the wines that stood out was the 1996 Mondavi unfiltered Merlot from California. Day 4: Wednesday 8th February The hydraulic pipe that my dad, Ted, took to Paarl last night was only fixed after 12.00 pm, and returned to us very early morning, so we had a later start than usual. Dawn saw us back to a block of Sauvignon Blanc again. M3 Sauvignon Blanc is planted to clone 159, characteristically grassy, green pepper and green fig in flavour. From M3, I can see five different wine regions, as well as Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Table Mountain, Robben Island in Table Bay and False Bay. A Boeing 747 passes overhead and I think back on the old South African saying that you weren’t allowed a drink until the Boeing flew over. Whoever thought of that one was desperate for a drink! The racking of Monday’s sauvignon blanc proceeded without a hitch and soon we were ready to start growing up the yeast cultures for the individual tanks. A technique we have used for the last ten years is to pump in a huge amount of air into the growing yeast culture using a simple fish tank pump! Before you start laughing, it works! We end up with virtually no lag phase on the fermentation. I go back to the vineyard again to take some samples as the rest of the office staff arrive at work! The Jackal Buzzards already call overhead as I walk down the rows of the Merlot, sampling bunches and breaking open berries to check the colour of the seeds. It seems like the French clone Merlot (MO 348) is not too far off from being harvested. Tasting the juice and analyzing it will confirm what I already feel – we will be in the cellar all weekend doing pump overs on the first merlot of 2006!
Day 5: Thursday 9th February As I stumble out of bed at 3.30 this morning, I hear a Perkins diesel engine purring from the top of the hill. Damn, Ted’s up before me! He’s just turned 70 and is remarkably fit – must be all that Jordan wine! If I make it to three score and ten, and I’m only half as fit as my dad at that age, I’ll be happy! (That's him on the right, with the mechanical harvester – a bit later in the day, once the sun was up!) I didn’t take a sweater with me to block M3, and start to shiver as there is a cold breeze blowing through the vineyard. I am reminded why it’s worth harvesting so early in the morning… Making good Sauvignon Blanc is not only about site and clone selection, but also about time and temperature of harvest. Too warm and the pyracines will be destroyed while the juice browns far too fast for comfort, destroying most of the flavours. Far below, the lights of Cape Town flicker brightly as the city slickers stir and get ready for the morning traffic. A Cape Eagle Owl hoots approvingly as I walk towards the trees lining Cobblers Hill. I explain to Joel Booysen, our tractor driver, that we won’t be using dry ice initially as it is cold enough to only use meta. Potassium metabisulphite (or meta as it is commonly called) is what we use in the vineyard to provide a small amount of sulphur dioxide to protect the juice and grapes from browning. At 30 mg/litre total sulphur dioxide, the amount we use at Jordan is less than that found in many fruit juices! I have pre-weighed the meta into little plastic bank bags to make it easier to use! I wonder what my bank manager would say? Simply, better, faster? The hand harvesting team arrives at 6.00am and finishes Block 25 by breakfast. Planted to the “Weerstasie” (Weatherstation) clone of Sauvignon Blanc (now called SB11), this block has always surprised us. After tasting the flavours on the samples I took the day before, we have decided to use Vin 7 yeast for this block. Producing a lot of fermentation esters, this yeast will help emphasise the tropical, fruity flavours we tasted, but it will need a much cooler fermentation temperature of 12 degrees celcius, rather than our usual 15 degrees. Davey Jacobs, our vineyard foreman, guides the team to Block 5 Chardonnay after breakfast. Amazing to think that this vineyard, planted to Burgundian clone CY 277 the same year as our Nine Yards Chardonnay vineyard nearby, is usually ready to harvest a good week to 10 days before the Nine Yards. The chardonnay looks and tastes awesome, evenly ripe and best of all, the volume is better than last year! Contrast this with our 2006 Sauvignon Blanc crop - on average down so far about 25 % on last year. Back to the cellar, where Sjaak is busy showing Simone how to set the press cycles. After almost 7 years at Jordan, he’s comfortable with two control-freaks as bosses. I hear him say to her “in this cellar there is only one way, and that’s the Jordan way!” Kathy shouts out from the top of one of the tanks – “hey Sjaak, its lekker (great) to be a Jordan!” Day 6: Friday 10th February The Egyptian geese are already honking by the time we arrive at the winery. Everyone managed to get some much needed sleep, as work only started at 6.00am. The hand picking team continues with the Chardonnay and finishes mid-morning. By 10.00am Ted is back on the Pellenc harvester, and starts harvesting the lower part of Block 27 Merlot. (We want the reds to come in at a temperature of about 20 degrees Celsius, otherwise we’d have to warm the tanks, and hence the later start!) My sampling showed that the top third was not quite ready (still has slightly green seeds, the juice a bit astringent, a bit of a green olive flavour and not ripe black plum, and the sugar only 22.5 degrees Brix). No point in rushing ahead – we need both sugar and phenolic ripeness at the same time. I thank our lucky stars that we had the means and the foresight to install drip irrigation in most of our vineyards a few years ago. Without drip, we would already have had high sugars, but accompanied by green tannins. Irrigation scheduling this year was very tricky. Many farmers seem to forget that very good, late winter rains can actually result in serious drought stress in many vineyards later in the season! Feeder roots situated in soils with high water levels do not send out new growth tips until the soil starts drying out. In a growing season characterized by strong SE and SW winds, soils suddenly dry out, resulting in vines stressing far more than they would in a normal season. The buildup to the 2006 vintage was a classic example! Having only received 36.5mm of rainfall from October to February so far, has meant that we have had to plan our supplementary irrigation scheduling very carefully. You have to think like a grape! All one needs to do is keep the vines happy, not increase berry size or canopy density. Let nature do the rest! I drive up to our highest south-facing Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc vineyards, situated on deep, red-brown Glenrosa soils, overlying 600 million year old granites. At almost 400m above sea level, this is one of the highest and coolest sites in Stellenbosch. From here I can see 5 different wine regions, the same spot where we stood watching as Mark Shuttleworth, a distant relation and the first African in space, journeyed to the International Space Station. It was on one of the space shuttle’s night passes over Africa, sometime between the 25th April and the 5th May, 2002, and his words “you can go from N America to W Africa in 11 minutes” at one of the many interviews afterwards, puts time, and man’s existence into perspective as I think about the age of the underlying geological formations in our area. As I sample the bunches, I don’t bother tasting the grapes– after tasting the first berry I could tell that the vineyard still had a way to go. Back at the winery laboratory, the analysis of the sample on the Sauvignon Blanc confirms my gut feel: Sugar 21.1 degrees Brix, Total Acid (TA) 11.0g/l and pH 3.01 Last time I sampled this vineyard the TA was 13.6g/l, so at least the grapes are ripening! Back at the winery, Kathy has already turned the cooling on Tank 16 fully, to chill the fermenting Sauvignon Blanc juice as much as possible while getting the barrels ready for our first barrel-fermented Sauvignon (Blanc Fume) of 2006. We learnt the hard way in our first vintage in 1993, that if the fermenting juice isn’t cold enough when it goes to barrel, it ends up frothing out of the barrel for hours! Even so, one cannot put more than 200 to 210 litres in a 225 litre barrel and they have to be topped at the end of fermentation. Day 7: Saturday 11th February Today, 16 years ago, is a day that South Africans will never forget. On the 11th February, 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years. Two months before then, while Kathy and I were driving into San Francisco one morning, it was announced over the radio that negotiations for Mandela’s release had begun. We knew then that it was time to go back to South Africa to start Jordan Winery! The picking team has the day off today because there are no vineyards ready to harvest. I will need to take a number of samples tomorrow to give them some idea of when they would harvest again next week. Fermentations are progressing well in the cellar. Even though I came in again late last night to monitor temperatures, Tank 6 (Sauvignon Blanc) drops from 15 to 13 degrees Celsius, so we have to adjust the cooling slightly. While Vin 13 locally produced yeast,) can cope with lower temperatures, I am relieved that Sjaak noticed the drop in temperature in time. If it had been D 47 we could have been faced with a stuck fermentation! Kathy makes up another batch of bentonite (a natural clay mineral used for fining protein). I still chuckle to myself as I remember the winemaker at Iron Horse where we worked in California, asking Kathy with a grin, to make the “bed to night”. John Sotelo used to say that to all the girls! At Jordan we prefer to add the bentonite once peak fermentation has started. Adding it after fermentation on finished wine, strips out some of the flavours. Even worse would be to use it on juice during settling, as both nutrients and flavour compounds may be removed at racking. Bentonite needs to be re-hydrated with warm water for at least 24 hours before use. Its negative charge adsorbs positively charged proteins and the resulting clay-protein complex flocculates and settles easily and quickly after fermentation. A more acidic wine with a lower pH results in an increased positive charge on the unstable proteins which will therefore react more readily with the negatively charged bentonite. It is also four times more effective at pH 3 than pH 3.6. Ours comes from Wyoming, so a natural product with frequent flyer miles!
Day 8: Sunday 12th February Today in history, in 1554, Jane Grey was beheaded at the Tower of London. Born at Bradgate in 1537, she had been Queen of England for 9 days. My great-grandfather, Alfred Edward Jordan grew up playing around the ruins of Bradgate. It was in 1889 at the age of 17, having finished his apprenticeship as a shoemaker, that he decided to set sail for South Africa. He settled in Wellington, in the winelands of the Western Cape, and named the manor house he later built, Bradgate. We regard our Bradgate range, dedicated to Alfred Jordan, as a great house-wine style. With the emphasis on fruity accessibility rather than on complex oak maturation, it is perfect as a quality wine-by-the-glass! Thinking about the Tower of London, it dawned on me that it would be my head on the block if I didn’t get into the vineyards early enough to take samples this morning. The picking team is waiting for my decision, so I’m in the vineyards by 6.45am to take samples, after quickly checking the fermentation temperatures in the cellar. Kathy, Sjaak and the rest of the team have 4 tanks to rack while I am in the vineyards, and we have a number of barrels to prepare in the underground cellar later. Walking through the Nine Yards Chardonnay vineyard, I see that there was a heavy dew last night. Perhaps there’s still a chance that we will be able to make a Mellifera Noble Late Harvest wine from our Riesling this year after all. I have almost given up hope as all our vineyards are so clean and botrytis-free. Time will tell! I taste a few chardonnay berries as I walk along, and although fairly concentrated, there is a slightly green, leafy taste present, so I guess this vineyard is still at least 5 days away from harvest. Six vineyard samples later I’m in Block 2 Sauvignon Blanc. This is our oldest block that my dad planted in 1983 when the first virus-free planting material started to appear in the industry. Twenty three years later it is still going strong, but starting to decline, so we have already started to plan the replanting of this vineyard in a few years time. I’ll still plant Sauvignon Blanc on this site again: south-facing, deep Hutton (red, loamy) soil with a very good water holding capacity. (Being a geologist in my previous life has helped us understand and better plan which varieties are best for these different soils. As the only farm in this area with North, South, East and West-facing slopes, we have therefore been able to specialise with different varieties on these different soils and slopes.) Back at the winery, the analysis of the Nine Yards Chardonnay looks promising: Sugar- 22 degrees brix, TA 8.5g/l pH 3.27. The vineyard is in great shape, and will easily cope with another week or longer before harvesting. Block 2 Sauvignon Blanc tastes perfect – the sugar is lower than I had thought at 23.4 degrees brix, the TA 8.0 g/l and pH 3.4 (I had thought we would have to harvest at about 24 degrees brix, as last weeks sample had an acidity of just over 9g/l.) What counts is the taste though, and a quick calculation shows that the potential alcohol is already about 13.5%. Why lose flavour and natural acid – we’ll harvest this first thing tomorrow morning! Generally we find that we have a slightly higher alcohol conversion rate than what the text books give – we multiply by 0.58, rather than the text book 0.56. Interesting to note though, is that in practice we have also found that local yeasts have a slightly lower conversion rate than many of the French yeasts! That’s why with Block 4 Merlot (where my sample shows a sugar of 24.4 degrees brix, ripe brown seeds and a wonderfully ripe mulberry/plumy taste) we will rather use WE 372, a local strain producing a slightly lower alcohol.
Day 9: Monday 13th February We were able to crush just over 5 tonnes of Sauvignon Blanc before the first Merlot for the day arrived at the cellar. Martin Smith had to be wide awake at the receiving bin and crusher as we received Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc simultaneously! By rinsing all traces of Merlot and changing pipes at the crusher, we are able to alternate varieties without a hitch. I visit all our Merlot vineyards but only take samples in 4 of them. McKenzie Block 8, planted to French clone 348 on Richter 110 rootstock, is divided up into two row directions. N-S and E-W, so I sample these separately, as I am certain the juice analysis will show a difference. I prefer the ripe berry flavour from the N-S rows, but somehow the structure and acidity of the berries from the E-W rows seems better. While walking through the top third of Block 27 Merlot, I come across a stone hand axe in one of the rows. We have found many of these perfectly shaped hand axes in this area over the years, and my thoughts wander as to what ‘Stellenbosch Man’ looked like during the early stone-age. He would have been upset at all the invader species such as Black Wattle and Port Jackson that covered these hillsides until relatively recently. I’m sure that he’d be far happier with Merlot! I make a mental note to add this ‘find’ into the wooden Jordan wine box of “goodies” for Neleen and Gerrie at Vivat Bacchus Restaurant in London. (Recently rated one of the top 10 wine restaurants in London, she’s serving our Jordan Merlot as a wine-by-the-glass.) When I get back to the cellar with the samples, I hear Neil Diamond belting ‘Sweet Caroline’ full blast from the speakers outside the lab. As I give the grape samples to Lucinda Heyns, she chuckles and says, “We decided that this is how you should be putting an Old World flavour into your New World style of wines.” This one was Martin’s choice! I look down at the rest of the collection of CD’s and recognise Sjaak’s Skunk Anansie and the latest from Fokoffpolisiekar, the latter a CD I bought my Dad Ted after he was falsely arrested for a few hours recently on a trumped-up charge! The analysis on McKenzie Block 8 is very interesting. The N-S rows show a sugar of 23.9 degrees brix, a TA of 6.2g/l and a pH of 3.33, while the E-W rows are a lower 22.3 degrees brix, higher TA of 7.7g/l and a pH of 3.32. The bunches are also slightly more shaded, so I suspect that the E-W rows also have a higher percentage of malic acid. After lunch I am able to catch up some paperwork. One of the envelopes I open contains the latest SAWIS Wine Industry Information publication. A quick calculation provides an interesting bit of trivia – Jordan will harvest about 0.1 % of South Africa’s total grape crop in 2006!
Day 10: Tuesday 14th February 2006 Happy St Valentine’s Day Sophia! In the words of the poet, Pablo Neruda, “…On the skin of grapes I thought I touched you. The feel of wood suddenly brought me in contact with you… You are made for my soul.” Today, the 14th February, also marks the celebration of our 14th vintage at Jordan! The scattered porcupine quills in one of the rows in Block 1A Chardonnay are a dead giveaway that the vineyard is only a few days away from harvest. It is cold as I sample our oldest block of Chardonnay, planted twenty one years ago to Davis clone 5. The wind is blowing NW and I see a huge bank of clouds approaching Table Bay. Already Robben Island is obscured from view. I wonder if the 30% chance of rain forecast for this evening will materialise. The rows are only about 75 m long, and I stop every 15m to take a random sample. A few stalks and the odd berry lying in the middle of the row show that the porcupines were also out sampling last night! The steep hillside to the west of the vineyard is covered with wild olive trees, the roots appearing like gothic arches at the entrance to every porcupine burrow. Soon they will move lower down the slope to where our spring is located, in search of the wild March lily bulbs, Amaryllis Belladonna. The harvesting team races through the last of Block 2 Sauvignon Blanc before breakfast, and continues with Block 3 Chenin Blanc, planted to a French clone from Montpellier. Davey has them organized in 4 rows, 6 people to a row. With the constant banter and Willem shouting “n' volle vir n' leë, n' volle vir n' leë” (a full lugbox to get another empty one), with one’s eyes closed, you’d be forgiven for imagining that you’re surrounded by the flower sellers from the Bo-Kaap. There’s an air of excitement as they’re working on “stukwerk” (piecework). Many are expecting to earn a good bonus today. Of all the samples I take, only one vineyard seems perfectly ready – Block G2, our highest, S-facing Chardonnay vineyard. With an analysis of 22.7 degrees brix, a TA of 8.5g/l and a pH of 3.33, the intense green fig flavour makes one wonder whether Bacchus didn’t sprinkle the Sauvignon flavours on the bunches out of a bottle overnight! I race over to Zevenwacht to collect UK agent Julius Barratt and his wife Marie, here on their annual pilgrimage to the Cape. We discuss our travel plans and trade visits for the UK in May, including a visit to Rick Stein’s restaurant in Cornwall, and an appointment with “The Fat Duck” in Berkshire, rated the top restaurant in Britain last year. Both have specially requested our wines for their winelists. We taste our newest vintage wines with Julius, paired with crayfish that Kathy and I caught at Bettys Bay. When I visited Singapore with Yngvild Steytler of Kaapzicht and Donald Smuts of JP Bredell in November last year, I was inspired by the complexity of different flavours I tasted there, so for lunch we grilled the crayfish and served it with a delicious chilli-ginger sauce.
Day 11 Wednesday 15th February Last night, at almost exactly midnight, I checked the tanks again and adjusted a few temperatures where necessary. A French winemaker we worked with in California instilled in us the habit of physically touching each tank as one reads the temperature gauge. He made the first sparkling wine in India, called Omar Khayyam, where in those days one couldn’t rely on technology! It has, on occasion, been sound advice! As I put the lights on in the crushing cellar, I immediately noticed water running from the must chiller. Somehow, after 14 years, the stainless steel tube-in-tube chiller we use to bring the temperature of the white mash down to 10 degrees Celsius had developed a hole in one of the pipes. It wasn’t too serious, but I thank our lucky stars that it didn’t happen while we were chilling any grapes! This is the very reason why I never wanted to use glycol as a coolant during harvest. Our 20 000 litres of chilled water circulating around the cellar at 7 degrees Celsius is more than adequate to cool our tanks. Many older cellars use cooling plates inside the tanks, but at Jordan we designed our tanks with external spiral cooling bands so that coolant could never accidentally mix in with the wine. A quick inspection shows that we’ll still be able to use 8 out of the10 must chiller pipes until it can be repaired. Perhaps we are being taught a lesson after teasing Simone about using anti-freeze on wines in Austria! Block G2 Sauvignon Blanc ends up with a yield of only 3.03 tonnes/ha, much lower than what we had originally estimated. With bunch weights averaging only 80g compared to the usual 120 – 130g, I hope the concentration makes up for the lack in volume! Rachel and Juanita have invited 48 of our top Cape Town trade customers to experience the Jordan cellar in action, followed by a ‘Harvest Lunch’ where we will taste some of our newly released wines. I bring some extra samples of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz grapes back to the cellar with me, so that our guests can see the difference between the varieties as we taste settling and fermenting juice. It’s good to chat to Alan Forrester of 96 Winery Road, to Wendy Burridge from Wine-of-The-Month-Club as well as the team from Blues, The Cellars, Hohenhort and many others. This time of the year these guys are our only link with the outside world! The first chardonnays from Block 19 and 5 are fermenting well, and the fermentation locks releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the barrels bubble away like an army of frogs in the underground cellar. Lots 1 and 2 are at peak fermentation, and the temperature of the juice in barrel has risen to between 21 and 25 degrees Celsius. At these higher temperatures, the yeasts produce much more glycerol than our tank fermented portion of Chardonnay, where we ferment at 18 degrees C. This adds extra ‘mouthfeel’ to what seems to be a potentially wonderful Chardonnay vintage.
Day 11: Wednesday 15th February Last night, at almost exactly midnight, I checked the tanks again and adjusted a few temperatures where necessary. A French winemaker we worked with in California instilled in us the habit of physically touching each tank as one reads the temperature gauge. He made the first sparkling wine in India, called Omar Khayyam, where in those days one couldn’t rely on technology! It has, on occasion, been sound advice! As I put the lights on in the crushing cellar, I immediately noticed water running from the must chiller. Somehow, after 14 years, the stainless steel tube-in-tube chiller we use to bring the temperature of the white mash down to 10 ºC had developed a hole in one of the pipes. It wasn’t too serious, but I thank our lucky stars that it didn’t happen while we were chilling any grapes! This is the very reason why I never wanted to use glycol as a coolant during harvest. Our 20 000 litres of chilled water circulating around the cellar at 7 degrees Celsius is more than adequate to cool our tanks. Many older cellars use cooling plates inside the tanks, but at Jordan we designed our tanks with external spiral cooling bands so that coolant could never accidentally mix in with the wine. A quick inspection shows that we’ll still be able to use 8 out of the10 must chiller pipes until it can be repaired. Perhaps we are being taught a lesson after teasing Simone about using anti-freeze on wines in Austria! Block G2 Sauvignon Blanc ends up with a yield of only 3.03 tonnes/ha, much lower than what we had originally estimated. With bunch weights averaging only 80g compared to the usual 120 – 130g, I hope the concentration makes up for the lack in volume! The first chardonnays from Block 19 and 5 are fermenting well, and the fermentation locks releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the barrels bubble away like an army of frogs in the underground cellar (that's one of the locks in the photo on the right). Lots 1 and 2 are at peak fermentation, and the temperature of the juice in barrel has risen to between 21 and 25ºC. At these higher temperatures, the yeasts produce much more glycerol than our tank fermented portion of Chardonnay, where we ferment at 18 ºC. This adds extra ‘mouthfeel’ to what seems to be a potentially wonderful Chardonnay vintage.
Day 12: Thursday 16th February 2006 The heavyweight bottles we ordered last year for our end-January bottling of our 2005 Nine Yards Chardonnay only arrived this week! We were not informed by our suppliers that this bottle was being phased out, nor that their distributor would be closing down. Customer care, it seems, doesn’t exist in some circles! This means that the Jordan Nine Yards will be looking for a new heavyweight bottle from the 2006 vintage. (Any suggestions?) Uncertain till the last minute that we would receive any bottles at all, it was a case of ‘seeing is believing’, which meant that we only racked the Chardonnay out of barrel today. Murphy’s Law prevailed around the cellar the whole day today, as the tank rubber popped out while we were racking, and the precious wine started leaking out. Luck was on our side though, as it happened just as Robert was checking the tank level. Quick thinking on his part, by re-filling two barrels, meant that we lost less than 100 litres! Still, 130 bottles worth of our rare and special Chardonnay went down the drain! The worst part of it is that the wine was already allocated. My sampling showed that we will probably have a crisis by next week Thursday – no vineyards are just where we want them, and it looks like we won’t be harvesting tomorrow either. I make up my mind to sample all the Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay vineyards tomorrow and let the picking team know to be on standby for either Sunday or Monday. With the early evening pumpover of the Merlot tanks, all went well until one of the harvest interns dropped a hydrometer into the fermenting juice. Luckily we stopped the pump immediately, the juice was hosed out of the container (thankfully only about 50 litres), and the shards of glass collected together. The intern’s name was entered onto a list for ‘finalist for the worst mistakes of the vintage’ award. Last year Sean Skibbe won the prize when he managed to wrap the 100mm flexible must line around the press as it turned on one of its pressing cycles, ripping the heavy stainless steel line right off the wall in the process. Such power! We now have the flattened tee-piece as a floating trophy until something better comes along! Hopefully this trophy will suffice for many, many years. Day 14: Saturday 18th February While sampling this morning, I came across a few vines covered with mealybug and marked them so that they may be sprayed in winter. Mealybug (plannococcus ficus) is one of the key pests affecting vines, not just in South Africa, but in most wine regions around the world. Mealybugs produce a sticky honeydew on which a black sooty mold grows, weakening vines and may also spread leafroll virus. Recent research has found that mealybug may also overwinter on the roots of certain species of weeds such as Blackjack (Bidens Pilosa), Khaki weed (Tagetes Minuta) and Small mallow (Malva Parviflora). For this reason, at Jordan we have been monitoring our weeds very carefully, removing these by hand wherever they appear. We also plant a fibrous covercrop such as Korrog (Triticale) to suppress these weed species and to act as a natural mulch between the rows. Ladybirds and parasitic wasps are the most common natural predators, and where possible, affected vines are marked and preferably sprayed in winter so as to reduce the impact of chemical control on the ecosystem.
Day 15: Sunday 19th February The sound of the generator woke me up just before 5.00 am and I discover that there has been a widespread power failure in the Cape Peninsula and Boland area since early morning. With the Koeberg power station turbines in need of urgent repair, I realise that this is probably only a taste of what is still to come. Frustrated winemakers will arrive at their cellars, unable to cool their tanks or pump over their fermenting reds. This will affect the style of wines made in 2006 in those cellars without a back-up generator. Some years ago we bought a generator that can run the whole winery and it only took the first power failure for us to realise that it had already paid for itself. Later in the day, we receive calls from friends who are experiencing runaway fermentations. The frustration must be unbearable. The staff have been divided into shifts for the day – with the three Merlot tanks almost dry (as low as - 0.5 degrees brix), we decide to only do a morning and evening pumpover. The weather report is a little worrying – 30 per cent chance of rain tomorrow morning. One realises that you are at the mercy of the elements. What has been interesting this vintage though, is that the forecast maximum temperatures for Paarl are at least 5 to 8 degrees Celsius warmer than those for Cape Town. Everything is set up for tomorrow when we will harvest Block 1A Chardonnay early in the morning, followed by Merlot. Day 16 – Monday 20th February The sound of gentle rain has me reaching for the phone, anxious to hear the 24hr weather report for the Cape Peninsula. I dial the number impatiently – who cares about the next 7 days, its raining right now! As farmers we live from one weather report to the next, inextricably bound to Mother Nature, and tied to both the soil and climatic conditions of the hour, acting as both master and slave. My two-way radio crackles into life – Ted has already phoned Davey, our vineyard foreman, on his way to collect the picking crew at 5h30 am. After 6mm, we realise that the roads would have become too slippery to transport the grapes safely from Block G1, a steep drop of 240m. By lunch the rain has stopped, and a visit to Block M9 Merlot shows that it has only been enough to keep the dust down, wetting no more than the top 25mm of soil. The bunches of grapes are still too wet, so we decide to delay harvesting until tomorrow. The vineyard team is happy to have been brought into the cellar. For them it is like a school outing! We have so many orders to be shipped, so the staff are divided into groups, and for the rest of the day are sticking back labels on rows of bottles. As our first order to Greece has its labels applied, I learn how to spell ‘contains sulphites’ in Greek. The rest of the back labels for Denmark, the UK and Ireland are applied, the pallets are shrink-wrapped and they stand to attention like soldiers, ready to be taken on their voyage to foreign lands. I am thankful that we took the decision in our early days to export less than 50% and rather concentrate on our Southern African sales. Ted likes to say ‘We only sell what we can’t drink ourselves!’ Our Seguin Moreau barrels arrive from Burgundy and are eagerly unwrapped. The smell of a new barrel is like Chanel No.5 to a lover! The complex smells of fire-toasted, sweet vanilla and smoky French oak are enough to send shivers down my spine. Every barrel at Jordan is numbered so we can track the progress of each individual vineyard lot of wine. At Jordan, when calculating financial costs, we use a ‘Barrel Index’ (a bit like a ‘McDonald’s Index’) – interesting to observe that despite the strengthening of the Rand, a new barrel still costs the same as a return trip to Europe!
Day 17 Tuesday 21st February ‘Druiwe!’ (grapes have arrived), ‘Druiwe! Druiwe!’ echoes around the cellar as Joel pops his head around the row of tanks, his face beaming as he calls for Martin Smith to take in the first load of Chardonnay. ‘Druiwe’ is the nickname that all the staff has given Martin Smith, our South African born viticulturalist-wannabe-winemaker-living-in-California intern. The Rolling Stones ‘Sticky Fingers’ album plays full blast, lifting everyone’s spirits this morning as the attention is back on the harvest again. Although it is light just before 06h00, the sun’s first rays appear over the peaks of the Stellenbosch Mountains at 06h44. This is much later than when we first started harvesting on the 3rd February and there is a definite feeling that autumn is drawing near. The air is crisp and clear – nothing like a bit of rain to brighten a hazy blue sky. From Block 1A, the picking team descends like locusts on Block 19 Chardonnay and then continues harvesting Merlot as the day warms up. Ted starts off with Block G1 Chardonnay, planted to CY 95, one of the best quality Burgundian clones and then on to M1, planted to Davis clone 4 Chardonnay. After extensive research, this is one of the top Californian clones that my Professors at UC Davis, Prof Corney Ough and Anne Noble (who invented the ‘Aroma Wheel’) found to be the best quality. At Jordan, we don’t believe in the technique of using skin contact on our Chardonnay – in fact Kathy and I think that 5 months on the skins in the vineyard is long enough! The juice is therefore drained immediately to tank, and this captures the wonderful limy citrus flavours, without adding a coarse brashness characteristic of so many over-extracted chardonnays. The analysis of the M1 juice is incredible: sugar 24.5 degrees brix, 8.8g/l acid and an extremely healthy pH of 3.15. The Cape Town weather office report for the next 7 days advises that there will be a 60% chance of rain for next Monday, so we hope that we can keep up our record of 45 tonnes harvested today. As we clean up after the last load of Merlot has been crushed, Tom Mullett’s wife Bernadette arrives with a group from Ireland, and after they have looked around the cellar, Kathy and I take them into the vineyards for sundowners. The view of the African sun setting over Table Mountain is spectacular.
Day 18: Wednesday 22nd February The picking team starts at the bottom of the Chardonnay, Ted at the top, engine revving – it’s a race to the middle! At 70, he has outgrown his need to ride a Harley. His trusted steed has been upgraded to a 6 tonne French-built Pellenc Harvester! I suddenly realise that today is the 22nd of the 2nd, and we happen to be harvesting Block 22. Must be a lucky omen! This special, single vineyard is the birthplace of our Reserve Chardonnay, the Nine Yards. As the harvesting gets underway, I take a soil sample from this vineyard, which will be displayed at the ‘Celebration of Chardonnay’ to be held just after Cape Wine (the Nine Yards being one of 10 wines to represent South Africa). The soil is a coarse, reddish brown, clay-loam, with a brecciated white quartzite layer, indicating an ancient fault line running through the vineyard. Back at the winery, we set up for pumping over the Merlot that was harvested yesterday. Our initial pumpover evenly mixes the tank before a sample is taken and analysed in the lab. Based on the analysis and flavour we decide on a special strain of wine yeast – for OH 9 we decide to use Bordeaux Red (BDX), and for OH 8 we want to emphasise the incredibly ripe, brambly fruit tasted in the juice, so decide to use WE 372. With OH 8 we need to add 0.5g/l of tartaric acid (naturally found in grape juice) as the pH on our sample is 3.61 and the acid is a bit low at 5.8g/l. The problem with a higher pH is that after fermentation one could expose the wine to the risk of bacterial spoilage while it matures in barrel, so we’re not taking any chances! Today is another Harvest Lunch day, and despite an extremely busy and noisy cellar, we take 40 very inquisitive restaurateurs and wine shop staff through the process of making Jordan wines. Kathy explains that we have harvested about 250 tonnes to date and over lunch we catch up with the staff from the President Hotel, The Nose Wine Bar, Caveau and many others, occasionally called away to attend to harvest activities. It is great to see Johan Coppillie again, chef and owner of ‘De Groene Staek’ in Ghent, Belgium. He and two members of his staff visit Jordan with Doekle Vlietman and the Den Anker team. I remember visiting Johan with Dennis and Lies from Den Anker, and being introduced to a gentleman at the next door table. ‘Oh, he designed the Euro’, said Dennis as he went on to point out the wife of the Belgium Prime Minister. The generator roars into life again as Cape Town suffers from its umpteenth power failure. Half skeptical, I read an e-mail regarding the spate of power outages. ‘Koeberg will start up again on Friday, taking around 30 hrs….’ A list of areas follows with times of ‘load shedding’. I think to myself ‘the following vineyards will undergo load shedding tomorrow – Block 3 and Block 13’.
Day 19: Thursday 23rd February Pieter-John Murtz, one of our Jordan tractor drivers, picked 83 lug-boxes of grapes yesterday. That is over 1.6 tonnes of grapes! Having started the morning in the Nine Yards Chardonnay block, where every berry of every bunch seemed perfect, the picking team moved further down the slope to Block 23 Merlot. Merlot is a relatively easy variety to harvest. It has fairly long, loose bunches, and because we removed the leaves in the bunch zone earlier in the season, the bunches were fairly well exposed, and coloured up very evenly during veraision. This required very little sorting in the vineyard. The first Cabernet Sauvignon arrives mid morning – very small berries – and already after the first few rows have been picked, I can tell that we have over-estimated our bunch weights for Block 13. It is not unusual for us to take in Cabernet before we have finished harvesting Chardonnay! Having specialised with particular varieties on our 360 degree slopes, our warmer north-facing slope is planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, while the much cooler south-facing slope is home to Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. Some of the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards, such as Block 13, are grafted onto 101-14 rootstock, and this induces slightly earlier ripening than our blocks grafted onto Richter 110. Another advantage of using 101-14 is that crop level and canopy vigour is far better balanced. ‘Teee-bohhhhhhne’ I hear echoing from the top level of the grape receiving bin. ‘Please help me move the pipe,’ Martin calls to Tim. ‘On my way Lamb Chop’ I hear the reply. ‘Hey Bacon, please watch my pump.’ Danie Steytler looks up at Tim and grins. There’s a great camaraderie in the cellar. At the far end of the red wine cellar, Simone Jordan and Martin Scheiber (Team Austria) or ‘The Ostriches’ as they are called, are busy setting up for another pumpover. ‘Sharkie,’ Simone asks Sjaak Nelson (apt name for his shark fin hairstyle) – ‘which tank must we do next?’ It is Simone and Martin’s turn to cook tonight, and we are treated to a typical Austrian meal – ‘Wiener Schnitzel mit Petersiliekartoffel und Preiselbeeren’. They choose our special bottling of the 2005 Jordan Sauvignon Blanc (with a screwcap closure) to serve with the meal. It is tempting to relax and taste more wines, but there are still a few hours of work to do in the cellar and one of the movable presses is playing up.
Day 20: Friday 24th February The percentage of settled lees for Block 22, (our Nine Yards Chardonnay Block) is just on 12%. To an accountant, this 12% remaining in the tank after the clear juice has been racked, (separated) is as good as the juice it came from, but because we regard the filtration process as slightly oxidative, we would rather ferment this separately in barrel. To filter the lees we add a natural, inert, diatomaceous earth, and filter this through special filter cloths using one of our two lees filters. Everything happens in two’s in the Jordan cellar – we have two independent cooling plants, two movable presses, two mono pumps to transfer the juice and I suppose the two of us to ensure that our wine style doesn’t change dramatically from vintage to vintage. We all have our off days (and I suppose nights), and after last night’s problems with Press 1, we call in Mr. Scherer, a Swiss technician, to remove the motor drive and replace the braking mechanism of the press. Although our 2 movable presses are to all intents and purposes identical, I still prefer the juice that comes out of Press 1 in a favourite child kind of way! To finish pressing last night was a labour of love – one had to hold the sensors in by hand after manually rotating the press and then release them once the desired pressure was reached. It is a wonder that no-one had their fingers caught in the chain drive! Today is a big Chardonnay day – we take in just over 25 tonnes of Chardonnay before harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard behind the cellar. Whether it is the soil, the slope or the attention to detail, I don’t know, but this vineyard always provides the barrel or two of Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon with the ‘X-factor’ so necessary for our rare and special CWG wine, called ‘Sophia.’ By early evening, the fire raging on the Helderberg edges over the horizon, outlining the mountain peaks like a string of Christmas lights in Oxford Street. It is incredible to think that there are more species of plants burning on that mountain than there are species growing in the whole of the British Isles!
Day 21: Saturday 25th February The mist swirls around us as the picking team arrives in the vineyard. I feel elated and relieved that everyone has turned up for work on a Saturday. The staff call this vineyard ‘Klipkop’, and one look at the gnarled Chardonnay vines planted between huge loose granite fragments of rock, and I remember why this is such a special place. While he was terracing this steep hillside prior to planting, my Dad ended up underneath the bulldozer as it rolled off one of the terraces. Still to this day he talks about our ‘Jordan luck’ as he managed to call for help on his two-way radio. Although pinned underneath, he was unscathed and very grateful when I jacked up the bulldozer so he could crawl out. No sooner had I arrived back at the winery, than Joel sent a message to say that his trailer carrying the first 2 tonne load of Chardonnay for the day had burst a tyre and was perched at an awkward angle at the side of the road. I call ahead to make sure that the Kilotreads workshop in Stellenbosch could attend to our predicament, and it wasn’t too long before I could put the repaired wheel back on the trailer. Luckily today is a bit cooler, and although it stays humid, we are at least able to harvest more than half the Chardonnay in Block 20. This is planted to a wonderfully intense, limy citrus clone of Chardonnay (CY 3) and I can almost taste and smell the concentrated flavours as I envisage barrel fermenting more than half the juice in 228 litre Francois Freres barrels. By lunch we have started harvesting the Merlot portion of the Cobblers Hill vineyard. This single vineyard site is planted to Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, and provides the grapes for our flagship Bordeaux blend. Row direction is almost due N-S, which ensures good exposure to both early morning and late afternoon sun. The flavours on the grapes are of intense mulberries, black plums and blackberries. Later as Kathy, Sjaak and I are busy planning cellar activities for the next two days, I remark excitedly “This is 5 star Merlot in the making – all we have to do now is not bugger it up in the cellar! Day 23: Monday 27th February Red sky in the morning is a shepherds warning, or so the saying goes! A surrealistic scene greets me as I drive up to the top of the farm this morning. The first rays of sunlight pierce through the clouds, highlighting the high-rise buildings on Strand Beach as well as the ships anchored in Table Bay, making them appear extraordinarily large. I feel like Gulliver on his travels, perched on top of a hill overlooking the City, knowing that today is going to be a race against time. The lace-agate clouds loom ominously and I see that it is already raining in Durbanville and Constantia. Somehow the rain stays away till early evening, and the picking crew attempts to finish Block 20 from where Ted had to stop and override the harvester’s automatic height control, a very dangerous exercise. Strangely enough, it isn’t the steep slope that causes a problem, but the fact that the cordon wires are less than 60cm above the ground in places. This means that the harvesting chamber misses some of the Chardonnay bunches, which is why we continue harvesting the rest of the vineyard by hand. Our recent vineyard plantings all have a 75cm cordon height, and with the rows planted a maximum of 2.5m apart, the height difference between terraces isn’t so great. While the picking team continues with Block 20 Chardonnay, Ted and Joel harvest the first 10 tonnes of Jordan Shiraz from the 2006 vintage. As I walk down the rows, I stop and taste the sweet red berries every few meters, examining the seed colour as well as the texture of the dark blue-black skin. It is always nerve-racking when one starts harvesting a new variety. Once harvested, there is no second chance - the count-down to the first pumpover begins! Our Mauritian agents, Jean-Michelle Rouillard and Olivier Constantin arrive on their first ever visit to the Cape Winelands. They have specially flown out to see for themselves how we go about making wine at Jordan. Almost 50% of the bottled wine imported into Mauritius comes from South Africa, with France supplying about 27%. Mauritius is a good market for Jordan wines as we have our wines listed with many of the top hotel groups such as Beachcomber, One & Only and the various Sun Resorts to mention only a few. The two Mauritians convince us that we need to visit their customers again for a week in July. The last time we visited we had a 223% increase in sales, not surprisingly as by the end of the trip it felt like we had visited every hotel and restaurant on the 1865 km² island! Providing a good service is paramount when choosing our agents - Olivier comes from an F&B background, so understands his customers’ problems, and this gives him an edge over his competitors! With 22 411 tourist beds available, there is a never-ending thirst for good wine! Just after Davey transports the picking team back home, the heavens open on cue, and we are not able to have dinner outside for the first time this vintage. The first of our blind- tasted wines is very disappointing, as we all pick up the brettanomyces spoilage on the bottle of Joseph Phelps ‘Insignia’. It is Danie’s last night with us, so I open two great bottles of 1980 Meerlust Rubicon (his birth year) and am astonished to see that I had paid R4.19/bottle for them when I bought them from old man Reich of the Grand Hotel Bottle Store in Grahamstown.
Day 24 Tuesday 28th February By the time the rain stops, we have already recorded 14mm. This has hardly had time to soak in, but the dusty clay layer on our steep farm roads has become too slippery and dangerous to drive on. I walk through the vineyards, and after making several shallow test holes with Ted, decide that machine harvesting is out of the question for the rest of the day. By 10.00am, however, a gentle breeze has dried off some of the lower gravelly/sandy vineyards, and the picking crew resumes harvesting one of our best blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon. Block 29, is a sandy loam, and I realize that it is a matter of hours before the moisture is taken up by the fine feeder roots, so we decide to harvest this block before the influence of the light rain dilutes both flavour and acid and pushes up the pH. The team manages to harvest almost 10 tonnes, enough to fill one of our overhead tanks. The analysis is a very respectable 23.5 degrees brix, 6.6g/l acid and a pH of 3.49 A funny incident happened during our late afternoon pumpover while Rachel was leading a group of 24 Swedish wine tourists through the cellar. Distracted by everyone watching her do the pumpover, when it came to change tanks, Lucinda connected the pump to the wrong pumpover pipe. Unknown to her, instead of attaching it to the pipe going up to the rotating sprayer situated just above the skins of the tank, she attached it instead to a loose pipe that ended up lying on the catwalk 9m above. You can imagine the surprised shrieks below as two members of the party had a Shiraz shower! I’m sure they’re not going to forget Jordan in a hurry, especially as Rachel later presented them each with a special Jordan tee-shirt! Most of the Sauvignon Blanc tanks have already fermented dry – that is there is no appreciable fermentable sugar left in the wine. Once the wine reads 0 degrees brix, we use a special, very finely graduated +5 to -5 hydrometer to follow the fermentation very carefully. At 0 it is still possible to end up with up to 10g/l residual sugar, so we allow the wine to ferment completely dry, ending up with a reading of approximately -1.5 degrees brix. At that stage, the cooling will then be opened fully on the tank, and the wine chilled to about 8 degrees Celsius. This helps the yeast to settle naturally under gravity over a period of a few weeks. Day 25: Wednesday 1st March ‘One man, one volt’ would have been a good election slogan in the Western Cape today! ‘Power to the people’ - I hear John Lennon’s song in the background echo the words! Although today is a public holiday in South Africa because of the local elections, harvesting activities this time of the year dictate our lives; the vineyard staff all agree to work until 3.00pm, after which we will all go to Vlottenburg together to vote. Despite the shorter day because of election activities, we still manage to harvest 20 tonnes of Shiraz and 23 tonnes of Merlot. I am amazed at how many cellars are closed today, right in the middle of the harvest, especially with rain forecast again towards evening! There are a number of Chardonnay tanks that have to go to barrel. Sjaak, Kathy and I taste every lot of Chardonnay to decide which should go to barrel and which should be tank fermented. The most concentrated chardonnays that will benefit from being barrel fermented, have their cooling opened fully, chilling the juice so that foaming is minimized while being transferred to barrel. There are 5 main Burgundian-based cooperages we like to use for our Chardonnay, François Frêres, Seguin Moreau (from their Chagny cooperage), Taransaud, Rousseau and Dargaud & Jaegle. Although we specify medium toast on all these barrels, we know from experience that their house toasting levels differ substantially from each other. Rousseau is always a ‘heavier’ medium toast than Taransaud, the lightest of the toasting levels, with François Frêres having a heavy, charry toasting that emphasizes the citrussy flavours on our Chardonnay. It is amazing to think that these barrels have all been hand-crafted from 3 year air-dried staves, cut from oak trees that were spindly saplings in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Each barrel costs the same as a return trip to Europe, and what a trip it is! By the end of the day we have over 200 barrels of 2006 Chardonnay happily fermenting, the escaping CO² causing the fermentation locks to no longer sound like an army of frogs, but rather like a jubilant Newlands crowd after the Springboks have beaten the All Blacks. With all the labour intensive barrel work, we end up working much later on the public holiday than we had anticipated. As we leave the cellar, a slight drizzle starts falling, making us wonder whether we would be able to harvest tomorrow.
Day 26: Thursday 2nd March The voice over the radio startles me. I have overslept! It is 5h30 am, and half dazed, I find myself holding my hairbrush, talking to the bristle side, waiting for an answer from Ted! Dark grey clouds hide any sign of light. Expecting to find conditions outside wet and slippery, I am surprised that we only received half a mm of rain last night. The vineyard is completely dry, so when Davey arrives with the picking team, we decide to finish harvesting Block 20 Chardonnay. The March lilies (Amaryllis belladonna) have started blooming in Porcupine Kloof below the picking team, and as I am sampling in the adjacent vineyard, I observe that botrytis has started developing in the Riesling – if it dries out for a day or two after some warm weather, we could make a spectacular Noble Late Harvest this year. This is a wine we like to make for love, not money! Botrytis cinerea is a mould that causes the grapes to lose nearly all their water content, concentrating the juice. Called ‘pourriture noble’ (noble rot) in France and ‘edelfaule’ in Germany, botrytis must have perfect conditions of high humidity followed by drying to develop properly. With all 24 overhead red wine tanks full, we decide to drain and press the first Merlot (received on the 10th February), 20 days after harvest. We are very careful when pressing reds at dryness, as some residual sugar is often released when whole berries are crushed during the pressing process. Residual sugar often masks hard, pressy tannins, so if one isn’t careful, when the wine ferments dry you end up with a tannin attack! Alison Vogel and her Vinimark sales team from the Garden Route and Eastern Cape arrive to experience the Jordan cellar in action. We discuss forthcoming consumer shows and trade visits in their areas, as well as a ‘meet the winemaker’ dinner at The Plettenberg, scheduled for July. Day 27: Friday 3rd March ‘No warning! No warning’ Martin Scheiber cries out as he is drenched with cold water from above. (That's Martin on the right in dry mode, pumping over the merlot.) This now seems to happen to Martin every day as Lucinda washes off the top of the red wine tanks after the early morning pumpover. I have to wear a jacket this morning as it is freezing cold in the vineyards, and today for the first time we actually have to warm up the hand harvested Merlot as the tanks are too cold. Everyone is frustrated as we need a part for the harvester fixed at Stevens Engineering, but they don’t have any power to operate their lathes until just before lunch. I read in Grape about the tough time that many cellars are experiencing without power, knowing that many are only telling part of the story! (Our harvest interns are in constant touch with their friends at other wineries.) The situation is desperate for some! There is always a break of a few seconds when the Eskom power goes down and our generator starts up, and although our computers have UPS’s, the occasional spike results in expletives I have never heard before from the young ladies in our office, as they lose the information on their computer screens! I decide to play some head-banging music, and soon ‘Hells Bells’ by AC DC echoes through the cellar. I remember going to one of their concerts in Barcelona with David Castle – what an experience! Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t think twice it’s alright’ brings a sense of normality to the cellar again as the last load of merlot for the day is brought into the cellar.
Day 28: Saturday 4th March Ted has to wait until after 8.30 am before harvesting Block M7 Shiraz, as the grapes are still far too cold. Autumn has crept up on us quite suddenly! Simone Jordan laughs, ‘This is normal in Austria’. By 11h30 we have picked another 10 tonnes of Shiraz, and Ted arrives back at the winery in time to meet a group of private customers who have been invited to come and see the Jordan cellar in action. Mercifully, no one gets showered with wine! Kathy takes them through the winemaking process, showing everyone the difference between clear and settled juice, and letting them taste juice at different stages of fermentation. At lunch afterwards, we launch ‘The Insiders Club’, our Jordan Winery loyalty club for a select group of private customers. The first to reply (within minutes) to the e-mail invitation we sent out were Athol and Alison Rice. We also received a number of very interesting suggestions for a name for the club over the past few weeks, and it was ultimately life-long Jordan supporter, Afrikaans comedian, actor, entertainer, director and producer, Casper de Vries (# 15 to reply) who came up with the winning name! After Casper lost a big chunk of his latest work during a power failure, I can see his next show is likely to be called ‘Kragonderbreking’ (Power cut).
Day 30: Monday 6 March Table Mountain is the clearest I have seen it the whole vintage, and as I drive over the hill, the sky is a swirl of coral I can tell that it will be a scorcher later today! Martin and Lucinda join me early morning in the vineyards to sample the remaining blocks that still have to be harvested. Francis Carle arrives mid morning, explaining that he left a ‘warm’ Bordeaux of minus 2˚C the day before! Martin Scheiber comes over to introduce himself – ‘That’s nothing’ he says to the Frenchman, ‘My wife told me that it is minus 21˚C at home in Austria right now – that’s a difference of about 63˚C compared to Cape Town!’ Francis is the Technical Director of Seguin Moreau cooperage in France. A very modest yet astute man, he contacted me a few weeks back to say that he would like to come to South Africa for two weeks and work with us in the Jordan cellar, as he would like to get to know South African wines a bit better. ‘Jordan has been recommended as one of the top wineries in South Africa’ he says. ‘This experience will elp me to better recommend the oak barrels and toasting levels needed for your wines.’ Only later did I find out that for 18 years he had been the winemaker at Cos d’Estournel, a 2nd growth property in Saint Estephè, Bordeaux! I hear the sound of the harvesting machine outside the cellar. The pin holding the hydraulic cylinder in place has fallen out while one of the stainless steel harvesting bins was being lifted, twisting the end of the shaft. Ted fixes it in just over an hour, but only after the bin has to be manually emptied using buckets. Jean and Noelle François, the owners of François Frerés cooperage in Burgundy arrive for a meeting and tasting with us. They supply some of the best barrels for our Chardonnay, and Jean remarks that the South Africa they last visited 16 years ago was a very different country compared to what it is today. ‘This is like a Grand Cru Puligny-Montrachet’ Jean says. ‘Congratulations!’ We discuss our requirements – ‘Don’t change your style of barrels,’ I say to him. Quick as a flash he retorts, ‘Don’t change your style of wine!’ The evening is warm as we introduce Francis to a typical South African braai (barbeque). By the end of the evening, he can even say ‘boerewors’ (a local style of spicy sausage), the pronunciation made much easier after our blind tasting! A wine that Kathy and I helped bottle when we worked in California, the 1987 Iron Horse Sonoma Pinot Noir is the standout wine of the evening, closely followed by the 2003 Jordan Cobblers Hill!
Day 31: Tuesday 7 March Unknown to Martin, Francis is still in the cottage when he locks the door at 5h55 am this morning, on his way to the winery. Luckily we don’t have burglar bars on our house or cottage, and sleep with everything open, so Francis manages to climb out of one of the windows! The stage is set for a big Cabernet Sauvignon day today. As Francis and I drive over the hill to take samples, mother-nature sets her own stage. As if a million tonnes of dry ice are being poured over the top of the hill, so the mist encircles the vineyards, playing hide and seek with the picking crew. It is so thick that we can hardly see each other, and I recall the words of W.B. Yeats as I walk through the vineyards ‘I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’ While Francis and I are in the vineyard, Ted calls over the radio to say that he needs a lift home to change into warmer clothes. How the weather has varied over the past few days! When we arrive back in the cellar, Sjaak has bad news. ‘Press 1 has died on us again – I’ve left a message for Mr. Sherer to call me’, he says gloomily. ‘The press is full and we have only just started to drain the Merlot’. Frans has already started to stack and fill the first barrels of 2006 Merlot by the time we arrive back. We prefer our red wines to go through malolactic fermentation (ML) in the barrel. This is a lot more work than if we allowed it to occur in tank, but the resultant oak integration is more than enough compensation for the extra racking work. With ML, the natural wine bacteria, leucanostoc oenos, converts the malic acid naturally present in the wine, into lactic acid, having a much softer, creamier taste. (Think of sour Granny Smith apples containing malic acid, and compare that to milk, which contains a large portion of lactic acid.) While waiting for Mr. Sherer to arrive, I go to block M5, a French clone of Shiraz, to sample it in more detail, and am excited to see that the fynbos that I planted below this vineyard has just started flowering. Over the past few years, and as part of our drive to conserve the biodiversity of indigenous species of fynbos found at Jordan, I started re-planting some areas where we have cleared alien invader trees. The proteas are incredibly beautiful, particularly those closest to where the grapes for the Sophia come from. While the press is being fixed, François Rautenbach arrives from Singita Private Game Reserve to see the Jordan cellar in action. E-mails via François, from the Singita Ebony, Boulders and Lebombo staff, have provided immense encouragement to us when we have felt exhausted late at night. Our blind tasting is almost truly ‘blind’ as there is a wind blowing for the first time in many nights, putting the out the candles we set outside. To toast our first Riesling 2006 (to be harvested tomorrow), our first wine served is a 2003 Kloster Eberbach Riesling. A wine I am looking forward to trying, the Vasse Felix, Margaret River Cabernet proves to be corked (screw the cork!) but the Clos du Val Cabernet from Napa Valley, California is exceptionally well integrated and shows a very ripe spectrum of red and black fruit. I am pleased that the next wine, a Chianti Classico, a 2001, flaws everyone, because it has a lot more integrated, softer tannin than one would usually expect from Tuscany. Calls of ‘House palate, this is delicious’ are echoed when the next two wines, a 2002 Jordan CWG Sophia (followed by a 2003) prove to be the favourites.
Day 32: Wednesday 8th March It is still dark when Francis and I arrive at Block 1B, high up on our south-facing slope. This has proved to be an ideal site for our Jordan Riesling, and from this vineyard we can see the whole of False Bay and Table Bay. Cape Point lighthouse flashes in the darkness, and when the picking crew arrives, it is still another 15 minutes before it is light enough for them to see the grapes. I want to make sure that they don’t pick any botrytised bunches, or leave any clean bunches behind. This would dilute the sweet, concentrated flavours when we harvest the rest of the crop for our Mellifera, (a botrytis Noble Late Harvest) in a few weeks time. Today will be slower than usual, because the team has to examine every bunch! The coral sky promises good weather today, and as I drive over to the Cobblers Hill Vineyard, Ted arrives, ready to harvest the Cabernet Sauvignon. (This portion of the block is planted to clone CS 8 that we brought back from California). Ted reports that he has just chatted to Dr Andy Roediger, a polymer scientist based in Stellenbosch. Andy is working on developing a phenolic ripeness model for the South African wine industry, and for the last few vintages has been regularly sampling our Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards. Later this morning, Andy e-mails me the results. “The block is phenolically ripe, very good timing with the harvest!” he writes. The analysis at sampling showed a sugar of 24.8˚ brix, a pH of 3.26 and a total acidity of 7.5g/l. The taste of my sample seemed perfect yesterday, and the seeds were also brown, indicating that the tannins in the seeds were ripe. Luckily Andy’s tests confirmed this, as we had already decided to harvest the vineyard today! “One of the aspects when measuring phenolic ripeness” he writes, “is for A1 (extraction of the phenolic colour compounds) to peak and turn slightly downwards.” I look at the table and can see that the maximum extractable colour now measures 1754 (2033 on the 22nd Feb). This relates to his definition of an ‘excellent’ site for the variety in terms of terroir. A3.2 (the maximum colour that can be extracted in terms of normal winemaking conditions) measures 1061 or 60.5 % of the full potential colour (previously 879) or only 43% extraction. At least Andy’s model seems to be working! Back at the winery, Francis and I discuss a few aspects of winemaking. “At Jordan we ferment our red wines at temperatures peaking at 28 to 30˚ Celsius. What did you do at Cos d’Estournel,” I ask him. “With our vines younger than 50 years old, I would ferment at about 28˚ and for vines older than 50 I would go right up to 32˚celsius.” I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly, “fifteen?” I asked. “No, fifty” he replied, the smile on his face saying it all! Sjaak and Tim manage to stay one empty tank ahead of the loads coming in, and when Kathy and I go through the cellar with 42 of our Cape Town trade customers (who have arrived for the Jordan Harvest lunch organized by Rachel and Juanita), they have just started to empty another overhead tank. Tim (in the pic) is distracted as I introduce everyone to the Jordan cellar team, and forgets that he has left the valve open on the press. I try to warn him without causing panic, but too late! The press pan overflows as he is enjoying the attention, and he covers the shoes of everyone around him with dark red Merlot! It looks like a lot of wine, but I know that it is probably only a bucket or so! Day 33: Thursday 9 March While the picking crew takes in our last block of Chardonnay, Ted goes back to the Cobblers Hill Vineyard, this time to harvest our first Cabernet Franc from the 2006 vintage. This is one of the secrets to our success with the Jordan Cobblers Hill. Even our 2002 which won Best of Class and a Gold Medal at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London, contains 2 % Cabernet Franc. The official blend for this vintage is 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Merlot, but I always tell people about the 2 % Cabernet Franc. When it is occasionally pointed out to me that this adds up to more than 100%, my reply is that we always give more than 100% at Jordan! The Cabernet Franc for the Sophia also comes from this vineyard. Specially made for the CWG auction, the 2002 Sophia, named after the legendary mother of Faith, Hope and Charity, is a blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvignon (Faith), 10% Cabernet Franc (Hope) and 8% merlot (Charity). I am always reminded of Rupert Brooke’s lines, whenever I taste this wine: “When she sleeps, her soul, I know goes a wanderer on the air…” As a variety, the Cabernet Franc adds spiciness and a wonderful structure - without this component, the Sophia would have no soul. From the Cabernet Franc, Ted goes on to harvest M8A Merlot; this part of the block planted to clone MO 36. We green-harvested this vineyard in early January just as verasion started, and ended up cutting off about 20% of the crop. This concentrates the flavours incredibly, as well as ensuring that there is no hint of ‘greenness,’ a characteristic of some New World Merlots. Peter Clinton (our USA agent) will be pleased, I think to myself! It is not easy for the picking crew to harvest the Chardonnay, as they have to be careful not to pick any Gewürztraminer bunches from the occasional Gewürz vines in this vineyard. I budded this vineyard over to Chardonnay some years ago, losing only one year’s crop in the process and having ‘older’ Chardonnay vines the next year as a result. The odd graft that has since died means that the Gewürz has regrown. We may still play around with a barrel or two of Gewürz for the Jordan Insiders Club!
Day 34: Friday 10 March Julie and Iain Anderson of J Productions arrive just after 6.00am, to film the early morning red wine pumpovers in the Jordan cellar. They are producing a DVD for one of our Johannesburg customers, Cellar d’Or. While on my way to take vineyard samples, they interview me near the top of the farm as the first rays of light cover the vineyards in a golden glow. Once it warms up slightly, Ted continues harvesting Block M8A Merlot, before harvesting the last of the Cabernet Franc from the Cobblers Hill vineyard. This goes into overhead red wine tank number OH 13, my lucky number! This is one to watch for the Sophia. Clive Engelbrecht, one of our cellar staff, insists that Bob Dylan’s music makes him hungry! He says he can’t explain it! Martin ‘Druiwe’ is a big Bob Dylan fan, and he has brought a selection of CD’s to the cellar. Let’s hope that the sound of “Forever Young” adds a youthful exuberance to our 2006 Merlot. The slower grape intake allows me to catch up with much of my admin work. One of the envelopes that arrive in the mail contains the Certificates awarded to Leon Nero for the Senior Cellar Technology course he attended. Leon, the eldest son of Pieter Nero, one of our Tractor Drivers, is our bottling line operator. We paid for Leon to attend both SKOP 1 and SKOP 2 courses at Elsenburg Technical College as he said it was his dream to go into the wine industry – it is wonderful to see what knowledge does to an inquiring mind! Day 35: Saturday 11th March Size matters when you are looking for quality! We always opt for the small berry clones for all varieties planted at Jordan, and as I walk between the rows of our oldest two Cabernet Sauvignon blocks, I am thankful that this and a virus-free status were all-important criteria when we planted our first Cabernet in 1987. I will never forget my Dad’s words when I ordered the vines from John Barnes in 1986. ‘You’re crazy’ my Dad said. ‘It will always be a race to see who gets to enjoy the Easter weekend first, you or the Cabernet!’ To date there has only been one year in 19 that we have harvested after Easter, and it happened to be a later than usual harvest and an early Easter! For the first time in more than two weeks I hear the African Fish Eagles calling overhead as I make my way back to the cellar. The last of our Chardonnay juice from Block 36 is being racked, and even though we have more than 138 tonnes of Chardonnay in the cellar, everyone is sad that this is the last of the 2006 vintage Chardonnay. (The pic shows the underground cellar full of fermenting Chardonnay, giving a Burgundian feel to this part of the cellar....) Apart from the red wine pumpovers still taking place three times per day, while there is an opportunity, the cellar is cleaned thoroughly to avoid any bacterial or spoilage yeast build-up. Day 36: Sunday 12th March Kathy and I take the 6.00am pumpover shift with the two ‘Ostriches’. Each tank is usually pumped over for about 30minutes, but those red wine tanks that have already fermented dry are only pumped over for 10 minutes, simply to wet the skin cap. This is done ‘closed’ as we want to avoid oxidising the young wine. The carbon dioxide in the tank keeps the wine fresh, preventing the alcohol from oxidising into acetaldehyde (think of the smell of stale beer or bruised apples). The heavens open and the deafening roar of the rain on the cellar roof drowns the sound of any cellar activity. I think of the poor cyclists getting ready for The Argus Cycle race, and am glad that I didn’t agree to ride a tandem with John Collins! We have been concerned with Tank 17, a tank-fermented Chardonnay from Block 5 that is being fermented with French yeast, D47. From the fermentation curve points we plot every day, we predict that the fermentation is slowing down, and could ‘stick’, leaving some unwanted natural residual sugar in the wine. The decision is made to re-inoculate with another vigorous strain of yeast, a saccaromyces bayanus strain called EC 1118. A lab analysis of the residual sugar is 16g/l, so the decision is a very wise one!
Day 37: Monday 13th March I hear the first Nightjar of the vintage calling its characteristic ‘Good Lord, deliver us. Good Lord, deliver us’ from the trees in front of the winery. It is barely light enough to see outside, but what I could hear is a Fierynecked Nightjar (Caprimulgus Pectoralis).It must be the onset of cooler autumn weather that has brought on this chorus. Even though we only received 4mm of rain yesterday, the decision is made to wait a day and harvest Block 9 Cabernet Sauvignon tomorrow. The vineyard is situated on a very well-drained, gravelly soil, so it would probably need at least another 24hrs to recover from only 4mm of rain. The cellar is in any case busy enough without us harvesting any grapes – there are red wine tanks to press and Frans has an on-going job to fill barrels with the newly pressed red wines. He has to stay ahead of the pressing schedule, otherwise all our tanks would be full and we would have no tanks to press into!
Day 38: Tuesday 14th March I should have known that the harvest was progressing in a manner that was too good to be true! Robert Starke is booked off sick for a few weeks with a bad back, Sjaak’s cold caught over the weekend has developed into flu, and I am knocked out like one of Herschelle Gibbs’ sixes by some virus. Let’s hope it’s not leafroll! ‘This is probably an Australian plot in retaliation to South Africa’s world record victory against the Australian cricket team,’ I think deliriously! With a score of 438 for 9 wickets, it was a game many will never forget. I manage to take one vineyard sample before having to spend the rest of the day flat on my back in bed; my two-way radio now my only link with the cellar and vineyard team. Through it all, Sjaak manages to stay upright for the whole day, surviving on a concoction of vitamins and medication! With today being the anniversary of Albert Einstein’s birth in 1879, we could all do with a little E = mc². In the picture alongside: Kathy using a hydrometer to measure the sugar in the Chardonnay juice.
Day 39: Wednesday 15th March ‘Beware the Ides of March!’ My soothsayer, a doctor in Stellenbosch, pumped me full of medicine, but warned me further that I should not be back at work again this week. Unlike Julius Caesar, I didn’t reply with ‘She is a dreamer, let us leave her.’ I haven’t felt as ill as this for many years – in fact the last time was when Mark Knopfler (lead-singer for Dire Straits) visited Jordan and I was too ill to see him! Over the two-way radio I could hear that the harvesting was going well in Block M5, our last block of Shiraz. Planted to a French clone, and producing a wine with ripe, red berries, white pepper and spice; it will probably be spectacular this year despite me not being there to see it being harvested!
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