Winegrowing cycles and cement eggs 28 March 2007

Chris Mullineux loks forward to a quieter time and seeing the results of an experiment

Winegrowing is all about cycles. The season starts in the vineyard with budburst, leading through flowering, set, veraison and harvest. After the harvest rush, things become more tranquil with leaf drop, the sowing and germination of cover crops, dormancy, and my favorite time, pruning.

The cellar has its well-known cycle that starts with crush, and is followed by fermentation, pressing, malolactic fermentation, maturation, blending and bottling.

These cycles have been in motion for thousands of years and are part of the romance of wine, but many people aren’t aware of a few small cycles that happen on the side.

One of these that hit me today are the yearly caffeine-withdrawal headaches that arrive just as harvest slows down. I know that not everybody relies on coffee to get them through the vintage, but there are many that do, and these junkies will no doubt relate to what I’m talking about.

Fortunately the withdrawal symptoms only last a couple of days, and as they are a sign of quieter times to come, I’m glad they’re here. The quietening down is also a good opportunity to reflect on the season past.

For us, 2007 has been a rather bizarre vintage. The perfect winter of 2006 (with lots of cold and rain) meant the vines were well rested and had adequate water reserves in the soil to see them through most of the season. Early to mid summer was also ideal, with long cool days and gentle breezes throughout. Growth was steady and even, and there was very little disease pressure about. Things were so good in fact, that we decided to push our organic programme to the next level and held back on spraying anything in the vineyards.

The extra moisture about did mean we had to spend quite a lot of time skofelling (de-weeding by hand) to keep the weeds under control, a costly and time-consuming exercise.

The ideal conditions were broken in the middle of January as a severe heat wave descended on the Cape, but though a tremendous amount of moisture was sucked out of the berries, shriveling them up, the grapes were healthy. Most of the vineyards that were near to ripeness at that time didn’t seem to have time to show stress in their berries, and it is fascinating following how the resultant super-concentrated wines turn out. There are some monster wines lurking in some Cape cellars this year.

Eggs – Easter ones and otherwise

In addition to wine quality aspirations, one thing most winemakers hope through the vintage is that they will be finished in time for the ideally placed Easter holidays. It certainly looks like this will be the case for most of us this year, and as children look forward to the chocolate Easter eggs currently lining our supermarket shelves, I look forward to tasting what comes out of the cement egg tanks we experimented with this year.

These we brought in from France, together with Boekenhoutskloof and the Sadie Family, as an experiment for fermenting white wine. Oeuf tanks are becoming popular with growers in Europe. Their shape allows currents which cover the full area of the tank to form inside, ensuring good suspension of yeast in the juice as it ferments. Cement is also a good insulator, and towards the end of fermentation temperatures are maintained, so the yeasts keep their momentum and finish fermentation without needing aid. It’s basically the same benefits as wooden barrels, without the wood flavour.

Finally, some biodynamic growers believe that as the dimensions of the egg shape are based on the Golden Mean, it has creative forces which make for richer, more complex wine. Whether or not this is true is open to debate, one which we will not start here, lest we incur the wrath of the editor! We have however fermented the same juice in these eggs and in barrel, and now that both have finished, I look forward to comparing the two to see if there is indeed a difference.

Be there a difference in wine quality or not, the tanks have added a welcome beauty to a corner of our cellar, and if the Easter Bunny can’t make it all the way out to Tulbagh, I’ll have our Oeufs to enjoy.

(For those interested in more info on how the tanks are made, follow this link and click on the Oeuf.)