Challenges of vintage 2008 29 January 2008

There are power outages, there’s high vigour – but Chris Williams thinks there are real opportunities for fine and elegant wines this year

Talk in the industry is centering  around power failures and how wineries are going to handle the uncertainty of not knowing if and when the electricity will go down. The two main problems for winemakers is that with no power, no grapes can be processed, from the offloading area, through the crushers and presses and finally to the fermentation tanks. At the big wineries this can lead to a backlog of trucks and tractors standing in the sun waiting to offload.  

Secondly, and more importantly, the all-important refrigeration equipment cannot chill the incoming grapes as well as the fermenting tanks. Without cooling, fermentations can ‘run away’, with the yeasts growing too fast, increasing temperature and finally ‘self pasteurising’. This means that the wines will have residual sugar – obviously a problem for wines which are meant to be dry. Furthermore, warm wine oxidises easier and can be attacked by other spoilage micro organisms. Over and above this, power outages add at least another two hours to an already very long day for cellar staff, leading to fatigue and the greater possibility of human error.

To this end, Meerlust has acquired a large, rather utilitarian  looking John Deere diesel generator, at considerable cost. We are happy to have it as there is already a shortage of these brutish machines and I suppose it won’t be long before we see a corresponding increase in the price of diesel. Shrek, as the machine has been christened because it is supplied in the lurid green of the John Deere tractor company, has to be integrated with the existing mains power so that it will kick in automatically when the power fails, adding even more costs.

And the weather too

Apart from the power problems, Cape farmers have been experiencing unusual weather patterns, not necessarily bad, just different from the norm. I believe they offer real opportunities to the thoughtful winemaker to produce lower-alcohol, purer and more elegant wines if handled in the correct manner. We have had higher than normal rainfall for January, carrying with it the risk of fungal disease, but the ever-present south-easter wind has dried out the canopies, and for now the vines are healthy.

The cold winter of 2007 has lead to the setting of a large crop, which gives us more scope for bunch thinning, retaining only the equally ripened, properly spaced and positioned bunches for air and light exposure. To this end, we have already dropped grapes from the early varieties during veraison [when the grapes really start the ripening process], as well as removing leaves on the morning sun side of the rows.

Cold weather, lightning and summer rains have also led to high vigour, especially on the Cabernet, which has already developed thick, woody canes. Our viticulturist, Roelie Joubert, has diverted the vigour into canopy height, developing a luxuriant leaf area which will optimise photosynthesis on the existing canes rather than developing side shoots.

A big challenge now is getting the growing tips to stop developing, so that nutrients are directed to fruit development rather than vegetative growth and ensure the retention of the all-important acidity in the berries. This is done through judicious and timely tipping. If this is overdone (known as ‘topping’), the canes will develop lateral shoots, diverting vigour from the ripening fruit and condensing the canopy, making it more humid and leading to less light penetration.

The opportunities lie in the cooler weather patterns and the fact that the extra rain  has ensured plenty of soil moisture. Our neutron probes  show adequate soil moisture with no irrigation, alleviating stress and retaining varietal aroma and hopefully ensuring that the points of sugar ripeness and tannin ripeness are closer together on the general ripening graph, allowing us to achieve the mythical “physiological ripeness” at lower must weights.

IF we reduce sufficient crop and IF the weather dries up now and remains cool and IF we are patient to allow full maturity in the grapes and do not over-extract in the winery, 2008 may well just produce some very nice wines.