A sigh of relief, but the nerves still jangle 5 May 2008

The most difficult vintage in the winery’s history is past, says Martin Moore gratefully

The last Cabernet Sauvignon grapes were delivered to the cellar on Friday, 4 April. I walked away from the crusher a much relieved man as the last bunches disappeared down the shute. A cold front was moving in over the Peninsula and the Weather Office predicted rain for the next day. For the first time in months it didn't worry me. I caught myself looking up at the gathering clouds mumbling: "Rain all you want. See if I care!" The most difficult vintage in the ten years of Durbanville Hills was behind me and a tempting weekend lay ahead.

Conditions hadn't changed since my last newsletter. The weather remained unsettled to the end, we battled to stave off a possible outbreak of rot in the vineyards while the small bunches resulted in a harvest smaller than expected. But we were also lucky. Despite the haphazard way in which cultivars ripened, the quality of the grapes was surprisingly good and what we have in the tanks at the moment won't take a backseat to any of our previous nine vintages.
 

April - The reds keeps us busy, the whites makes us nervous
April for me is a nerve-jangling month, not because it starts with April Fool's Day, but because we have to press the last of the red grapes, complete the primary fermentation and then coax the young wine to undergo malolactic fermentation before the winter cold sets in. Only then can we pump it over into the barrels for maturation to begin.

It is also the month in which we classify our tanks of white wine for our three product ranges - which to select for the Hills range, which to reserve for Rhinofields and to establish whether there is any of such superb quality that it will qualify for our single-vineyard Sauvignon Blanc. We do a number of blind tastings, classifying all the tanks for style and quality. Then, after a few weeks, we line up all those wines again and re-taste them, for with time one learns some wines just take longer to develop their potential. Only then do we start blending. This we do just once in the case of a particular vintage to ensure the taste spectrum will remain unchanged to the last bottle.

In making up our blends there can only be two factors that count: style and quality. This is a lot easier said than done, for the winemaker cannot be oblivious to the demands of the market for more of his wine. A loyal restaurateur said to me the other day: "When we have to tell our customers we've run out of Durbanville Hills it's like telling them we've run out of water."

It was a nice thing to say and obviously also said to make me feel good (which I did, being naïve and only human) but it is nevertheless a crucial question the winemaker must ask himself: What I'm blending now, is that going to be enough to see us through to the next vintage? And as his anxiety grows so does the temptation to make the blend bigger just in case, and often that is when wine gets added that isn't up to standard.

Although it might be tempting to look at ways of adding volume, I rather run short and disappoint those who like our wine, for once it is back on the market, they will buy it again and drink it perhaps even with a little more appreciation. But diluting quality to increase volume is a shortsighted approach that in the long run will cost you dearly. If I'm sounding sanctimonious, I'm sorry, but that's what I believe.

To summarise: I'm happy with the quality of the Sauvignon Blanc we've produced, to the extent that we will this year again make a single-vineyard white, always an accolade to the vintage. Sauvignon Blanc is a finicky customer, make no mistake. There is a change in the weather, and the flavour spectrum changes: a little bit colder and the grassy aromas dominate, a little bit warmer and the tropical ones do. As this varietal is prone to rot, this past vintage at times played havoc with my nerves. By contrast, Chardonnay is always reliable - oh, how I love that cultivar!

Satellites, planes and common sense
In the vineyards the leaves have started dropping as the exhausted vines ready themselves for a well deserved slumber. It is also a good time of year to map vineyard blocks and identify variations in canopy density, usually an indication of some problem, perhaps in the soil or in the vines themselves. Owners of low-lying vineyards increasingly use light planes fitted with multispectral imaging equipment to map their vineyard blocks. Where we are up in the hills that is a bit of a problem, not least because we are right in the flight path of the big boys coming in to land at Cape Town International Airport. So what we do is stand on the side of a hill and scan the slopes of the one opposite through a pair of binoculars. Sounds perhaps a bit primitive, but by transferring that information on to a map we obtain all the information you find on a multispectral photograph. And we are physically in the vineyards and can inspect from close-up what causes the problem areas.

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