User Archives: Harold

First of all, welcome back to one and all. I sincerely hope that 2012 will be a spectacular year!

Now we need to get back to business. It is the start of a brand new year, a year for new opportunities, a year to make yours! After a short little break, that I hope you all had, it’s time to get back into work mode. This is THE crunch time in the wine industry, with the grapes almost ripe, and the vines needing a lot of special attention.

Vines are a lot like people. When they are happy, they shine. A well groomed person always looks like they shine…hence we can accept that a well groomed person is happy. Well, the same applies for our vineyards. Allow me explain in simple cosmetic terms.

1) Hydration – you don’t need to be a viticulturist, rocket scientist, beautician or scientologist to know that nothing in life can survive without hydration. Just as your Johnsons & Johnsons lifts your face into a sparkle, the same way irrigation brings the life back into the vines! Especially with the heat wave that we are currently experiencing.

2) The Manicure – basically we “manicure” the vines by a method of topping, which is a action that we do to initiate lateral or secondary shoot growth. The reason is quite simple. As leaves get older, their potential to make food for the plant lowers, and eventually it becomes a parasite on the rest of the plant. So to ensure that we have enough leaves on the vine to ripen the grapes, we do this topping action, which in turn will stimulate this shoot growth, and provide us with enough leaves for the season. With red varieties, we break these older leaves away, the removing of the cuticle if you will. This will ensure more sunlight and even colouring of the bunches.

3) The Pedicure – this is the action on the vineyards where we “clean the legs”. We break away all the unnecessary shoots, ones that do not have any grapes, or that is not connected to one of the main shoots. These shoots have no contribution to the ripening of the grapes, and can therefor also be seen as parasitic. This action we call suckering.

4) The Brazilian – “The Green Harvest” is where we take away all the unnecessary grapes. This is done to ensure that the vines ripen the grapes properly, evenly, and optimally. The art of this normally lies in taking away the “shoulder bunch”, an almost secondary bunch that is quite often unripe when the rest is ripe. The trick is to keep just enough so that you don’t spoil the whole vintage.

5) Supplements – also very straight forward. As a human need his/her vitamins, nutrients and hormonal control, so the vines need this. We do this this is 2 ways. One is by drip irrigation, which we call fertigation, and the other by spraying the vineyards. The latter is done by tractor, and is more often than not micro elements, which can be easily absorbed through the leaves.

6) Sanitation – this is what we call spraying. This is done to ensure that we have healthy and functioning vines to provide us with the best possible grapes. Now you ask…what about organic? The simple reason that we don’t go organic is because of our area, and high disease risk we have. I could compare most organic vineyards as a boy in a bubble, as there has to be a 50m radius of no vines, or another block of organic vines around it. Our situation could be compared to swimming naked in the Ganges river…naked. We have very high rainfall, a lot of vineyards around us, and also a lot of other fruit orchards which carry the same diseases as we vineyards. This makes it really difficult to produce organic grapes, especially if you like to have a harvest in difficult seasons, such as last year.

7) Sunblock – for humans, the reason is obvious, in vines not so much. For vines, it’s all about balance. So when a heat wave strikes, we don’t want the berries to be exposed to direct sunlight, especially in the warmer part of the day – 12-4pm. So depending on the direction of the rows, we try and leave enough leaves on the vines so that it protects the bunches, i.e, to let them hang in the shade. Humans get blister and starts pealing. Grapes produces high amount of sugars, dropping out all the acid, and not building any flavours in the process. This in turn leads to an alcoholic wine with absolutely no flavour, about as balanced as Graeme Smith’s batting form.

This has been a very interesting growing season, with a dry winter and fairly wet and cold summer. At long last the heat is here, and hopefully it will stay this way, with about an inch of rain towards the end of January. I am really looking forward to this year and crush. The excitement fills all my happy places. Just the prospect of getting your hands dirty and creating that one special thing for the year, is enough to give you the biggest caffeine-meets-xtc-meets-being in love feeling. As the Billabong slogan goes, “only a winemaker knows the feeling.”

Hand pressing our barrel fermented Shiraz from the awesome terroir of the Swartland! Wine has superb integration of wood, nicely balancing out the fruit flavours! Excellent blending component!

Harvest the last grapes for the season. The Cinsaut is the last to come of the vine, as it is in one of the cooler areas in SA - Darling. The high day temperatures increase flavours, with the cold nights preserving the fruit. This should be good crush!

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