2008 not a season for sissies 31 March 2008

Martin Moore scratches his head, but picks whatever is ready to pick, whatever the surprises

Let me tell you the 2008 season is not for sissies! I am glad I'm not a young, inexperienced winemaker on my own in a new cellar, for this season one needs at your side a mean, well-drilled team and a tried and tested cellar to be able to handle the curve balls thrown at you by Mother Nature. Imagine Shiraz ripening before Pinotage and Merlot! Merlot ripening before Pinotage! When is summer supposed to arrive... after autumn?

However long you've been around you are never too old to learn, and one of the lessons I had to get under my belt was to forget about the picking sequences of previous years. What you have to do, is get out into the vineyards and see what grapes will be ready for picking next, whatever the cultivar. They ripen like normal, just not at the times you expect them to. Fortunately my team, of whom several have been with me throughout the ten vintages we are celebrating this year, handle the hourly changes to my harvest programme with aplomb (although I'm sure some insults are being hurled at me behind my back).

What happened to the bumper crop?
Based on the number of flowering bunches after budding we were expecting a bumper crop. However, I have also learnt not to count my chickens (or ducks or geese) before they hatch, which proved a good thing, as strong, cold winds during flowering reduced the size of the crop to average while the overcast weather during cell differentiation resulted in smaller bunches. I guess the leaf canopies that kept sprouting for ever after the good winter rains also played their role in diverting growth from the berries. It is at times like these that I am glad I'm a winemaker and not a farmer, for quality we can control up to a point, but quantity is in the hands of Mother Nature, she of the curve balls.

Not a patch on what went before
I was beginning to think the tenth vintage is about as interesting as the first until I came across a box of photographs graphically reminding me of the many near disasters of that first harvest. Which made me realise what we are experiencing now is not a patch on what went before. However, some of these photographs did bring a wry smile to the faces of some of us. There was one close-up of my blackboard at the time nicknamed The Winemaker's Panic Post. I had it erected near the containers serving as offices for the construction team. At the top appeared the estimated number of days to harvest, followed by obscenities aimed at the construction team whenever they fell behind schedule. It made me feel better at the time, but it didn't make me any friends amongst the builders so that I never ventured on to the construction site without my hard hat firmly wedged on my head!

"On site" was a phrase that remained with me throughout those early days, and I remember the puzzlement on the faces of some team members when I announced in an unthinking moment that "the first load of grapes has arrived on site".

Health notices on wine
We received notification recently that wine labels will soon have to display a health warning, together with examples of such warnings we can chose from. In my book, this preoccupation with health and other warnings can also be taken too far. It was brought to my attention that a French court recently ruled that an editorial in Le Parisien entitled "The Triumph of Champagne" should have carried the standard health and safety disclaimer "Alcohol abuse is dangerous to your health" that appears on all advertisements for alcohol products in France. This isn't the only move by the anti-alcohol lobby, ANPAA (Association Nationale de Prévention en Alcoologie et Addictologie), to clamp down on producers, sellers of alcohol and the media writing about it. The association also recently won cases against Moët & Chandon, Heineken and a French restaurant chain. I can't wait to hear the comments of some of my French winemaking friends to all of this!

More health notices
The phrase "contains sulphites" is now compulsory on all wine bottles if in the making of the wine the age-old practice of preserving it with sulphur dioxide (these days in minute quantities) had been followed. Yes, I know this requirement resulted first of all from the health regulations of certain countries where we export wine. Now we also have to do it in the case of wines sold on the local market. I don't have a particular problem with that but do ask myself: Why wine? Dried fruit and other edibles are practically soaked in sulphur dioxide but often nary a word about that do you find on the labels.

I hope the wine industry does not end up with labelling similar to what you find in the US where on a pack of peanuts it states: Contains nuts. I would certainly hope so... Nuts! Imagine having to read on the label of our Durbanville Hills Sauvignon Blanc: Contains wine... It makes you shudder, the absurdity bureaucracy is capable of.

The lovely scent of fermenting wine
The lovely scent of fermenting Sauvignon blanc permeated the cellar for days before it had to start competing against those of other cultivars arriving. During that time we experimented to see whether a combination of three new yeast strains could outperform our trusty old Vin 7. The latest trick after some serious research is to mix two or more yeast strains to see whether you can combine their best characteristics in the fermentation process. I'm not suggesting some old dogs have not played around with this before, albeit in a more unstructured manner. Recommendations to let the temperature rise to above 15°C at some stage of fermentation to produce more volatile thiols (those are the ones providing the tropical characteristics) also didn't come as news to these same old dogs who discovered this the hard way when cooling facilities in the cellar let them down.
 

• This contribution is  taken, with permision, from the Durbanville Hills March newsletter. It appears in full on the Durbanville Hills website.