Harvest in the Polkadraai hills 18 April 2008

Sometimes-welcome birds in the Bein's vineyards, pickers wanting stronger sunscreen,
and great merlot fruit

Grape's written before about the fine wine and fine people at Bein Wines, in Stellenbosch's Polkadraai ward, but they do it with more charm, so we asked Ingrid and Luca Bein if we could re-publish their latest newsletter (with just a few tweakings).

Let’s first report on the grapes: We are convinced that good wine is created in the vineyard. So we spent a lot of time there, monitoring and working and fine-tuning the vines. This season, nature started late for the 2008 vintage; but after a long and cold winter, we noticed beautifully even budding by end of September 2007. Our prediction was that we were going to harvest at Easter. Which turned out to be right.

The growing season was characterized by very favourable climatic conditions, no heat waves, but cool nights, and some rain from time to time. After veraison (when the grapes change colour) we again set up the bird nets, to prevent our friends from hacking into the berries. When I say ‘friends’, I mean it. Our vineyard has become even more environmentally friendly: all the donkey manure is placed around the stems as fertiliser. Result: new birds came in and made their nests in the vineyard, and even a dikkop family joined the francolins and the many guineafowls already roaming through the vines.

Luca is the vineyard manager; he himself trims the canopy with the hedge cutter and looks after the precise irrigation needs, and we both love to join our staff for suckering, shoot-spacing, green-harvesting and whatever else must be done during the growing season. This year we again had aerial photographs taken of from our vineyard in the near infrared spectrum. This allows us to subdivide our vineyard into different batches according to their vigour, and these subdivisions can then be individually managed. This is a great help in obtaining evenly ripe fruit, since every batch can be ripened to its own optimal ripeness, and eventually harvested and vinified separately.

Harvest itself was great fun. As predicted, it started on Easter Monday.

The alarm rings at 5am. It’s still pitch dark, but promising a beautiful day. At 6.15 Ingrid and our friend Peet arrive in Wesbank to pick up the harvest helpers. They are temporary workers; unfortunately none of them has a regular job. We would never use a harvesting machine, as all these people love to come and get some extra money.  They all got extra payment, of course, as Monday was a public holiday, as well as sandwiches and orange squash. We asked them to work carefully, sorting out any rotten grapes in the vineyard.

We planned to harvest for four days, filling a tank on each day. On the Easter Monday we did not get much in, as the day was too nice – only about a third of what we had planned! But three days later the grapes were in the cellar and everybody got a big bowl of potjiekos and was happy.

Something else we can smile about: we provided sun cream (SPF 16) to our dark-skinned workers, the same that we use for our ‘white’ skin. But they thought it was not enough and brought their own SPF 30 cream, and they all had a thick white layer on their faces, which they obviously were very proud of. So next year I know what to buy.

For us it was the best harvest ever, quality wise. We’ve never before had such good fruit with such thick-skinned berries, intense aromas, dark blue colour and crispy ripe tannins. The resulting wine was just like black enamel. We’ve been brimming over with enthusiasm, and now we hope this vintage will deliver its promise. Fermentation with different yeast strains went through without any problems, and at the moment the wines are busy with malolactic fermentation in the barriques.

As I write this newsletter and look out of the window, I see the leaves on the vines turning yellow. Autumn has arrived and winter is knocking at the door. But we look forward to the cooler season, with some good rain, when we can cuddle up by the fireplace and a glass of merlot in our hands.

• Link to Bein Wine's website