Season's end 22 April 2007

Bottling’s not much fun, says Francois Haasbroek, but the time of year does have
its good points

A long white cloud has come to settle over us now; the sun rises at leisure and sets in haste. We have come to the end of sunshine and heat pouring over us. To the lucky few of us that spend our days in vineyards and wine-cellars, the changes bring along new challenges.

For one thing, the bottling season is moving into high gear. All along the roads of the winelands you can spot trucks packed precariously with empty bottles – which in due course we will fill….  For us it’s the more ‘simple’ white wines and rosé’s which tend to be bottled around this time of the year.

It might not seem a big deal to put the wine into their bottles, but in fact it is one of the most stressful tasks I face on a regular basis. There are so many variables to check throughout the process that the mind boggles. For a start, the wine must be sent for various analyses and measurements to confirm that it’s ready for finally sending out of the cellar: volatile acids, total acids, total alcohol, total sulphur and free sulphur, density, microbiological status, cold stability, protein stability…. Not to mention my personal favourite: pinking. This is a strange reaction that especially semillon and sauvignon blanc can undergo, usually after bottling when leucoanthocyanin in the wine (it is colourless) converts into anthocyanin (which is pinkish, not something you want in your sauvignon) due to sudden exposure to air.

That’s the wine side of things. Then, if you are one hundred percent convinced that all these aspects are up to scratch, you start looking at the bottling plant. You must, of course, order the right number of the right bottles, the corks or screwcaps. And then patiently await delivery….

As far as the bottling line is concerned, everybody has their pet theories about how to ensure a sterile piece of equipment (or as close to sterile as possible), which you are entrusting with four months to four years of work. I myself prefer steam sterilisation, with the occasional caustic soda rinse – especially when switching from bottling red wines to white.

Depending on the size and make of the bottling machine, the line can run between 1500 and 8000 bottles an hour. My own stainless steel friend averages out at about 2800 per hour. That means (all going well) we can comfortably fill nearly 17000 bottles in six hours or so – about 12500 litres, which is a lot of wine.

But it’s all tense work – especially for the people around me: I am quite unbearable at bottling time!

Pleasanter things

On a lighter note, all the 2007 red wines in the Waterford cellar have completed their malolactic fermentations and I am strangely excited to get them out of the barrels and see what the season has delivered us. There are already plenty of reports of vintage results and predictions doing the rounds. I might be too young, or my eight vintages aren’t enough to give me the right experience – but to make vintage predictions barely three months after the act seems to me absurd and premature.

Another recent occasion which in my book counts as memorable was a lazy lunch in the courtyard at Reuben’s restaurant in Franschhoek with seven colleagues. Oh, and perhaps I should mention that Jancis Robinson was there at our disposal for a Q & A session. When I’d found out she was going to be in the country to judge in a competition, I’d optimistically (and cheekily?) sent her an email asking if she might perhaps be available for something like that.

Well, she agreed, and gave us the opportunity to pick her very impressive brain on the future for us. That is, for South African wine as a whole – which is an important point. She reaffirmed my own view: that unity in marketing is crucial, and that the single producer route is a dead-end in the long term. Also, making use of people sensitive to our cause in the UK and Europe will be much more effective than pushing the agenda ourselves.

Talking of which, I’m off to London, to the International Wine and Spirits Fair ….