Au Revoir, Piggies

The time has come to load the piggies on the trailer and drive them to Parkvale. Last weekend we made a ramp for them to walk up into the trailer, then we parked the trailer in their yard so they could get used to it. They’re so accustomed to me now that they don’t spook at anything I do around them so they just thought it was a new toy. This week I decided I’ve give them a lovely week of big feeds of pig nuts, but I nearly overdid it, because when I went down this morning, they weren’t interested in eating at all.

They knew. They knew it was their last day. Brattie wouldn’t get out of bed, and Crackling was standing in the corner. I got in with them and we had a little chat. ‘Look here, boys,’ I said. ‘Everyone has to die. I have to die one day too, and I don’t know how I’m going to die. I might not die as quickly, and as humanely as you. I might go ga-ga and linger in a home somewhere, dribbling, losing my marbles, wearing nappies, unable to run around in my final days or hours like you guys have been able to. What’s more, after you die, you are still useful, because you are food. When I die, I’m useless, I just take up space in the ground and am no use to anyone. In fact, I’m a burden, because someone still has to look after the space in the ground I take up. They’re not allowed to eat me, which is stupid because it would make a lot more sense if they were allowed to eat me, or feed me to some pigs.’

Then I gave them a good patting, and a bit of a cuddle, and I had a little sniffle (but not too much because someone might think I was going down with swine flu), and they perked up again. Their tails curled up, and they tucked into their breakfast, and they joshed each other, and shoved each other, and I could almost hear them saying, ‘yeah, she’s right, we gotta go so let’s tuck into these pig nuts and enjoy.’

They let me take these photos:

I know I’m going to cry when I drop them off tomorrow but that’s nothing to be ashamed of, I reckon. As I said to someone yesterday, ‘How would you like it if you died, and nobody cried?’

 

Young at heart in Martinborough

With apologies to that marvellously heart-warming movie “Young at Heart”, I’m borrowing its title for my blog entry to tell you about our first gig as the Midday Singers. (I know I’ve used a cliche, but it’s nice to have one’s heart warmed every once in a while.)

I love singing. I took singing lessons all through my secondary school days and I’ve used singing throughout my life to get me through sticky situations. To calm animals for instance. If you’re riding a frisky horse and feeling nervous, singing is a good way to calm him (or her). You can’t sing, and be nervous at the same time. Horses sense when you’re nervous and they misbehave even more, so when you sing, they think you’re in control even when you don’t think you are in control, so they start to settle down and then you can begin to take control. I sing to my chooks and it calms them down – they look out the sides of their little eyes at me and think, ‘what’s she up to then, eh?’.

I used to sing to my babies, and sing nonsense songs to my children when they were little, and we were going on long journeys in the car. When Briar was little she used to love me singing songs about crocodiles: “She sailed away/on a lovely sunny day/on the back of a crocodile/you know said she/it’s as safe as safe can be/floating down the nile/the croc winked his eye/as she waved the world goodbye/wearing a sunny smile/at the end of the ride/the lady was inside/and the smile was on the crocodile.

Then there was another one which started “Never smile at a crocodile/no you can’t get friendly with a crocodile (that’s enough about crocodiles and children. Ed).

I sang when I was scared of the dark. I sang when I was deeply unhappy. I probably should have burst into song when I was being attacked in Parliament – that would have shut them up. Now I sing because I’m blissfully happy. And I have joined a singing group in Martinborough, which started with just six of us and has grown to, at last count, I think 18.

Last week, we had our first house concert. Under the expert musical directorship of Jancis Potter, former head of music at Kuranui College, we practised and practised these songs: Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Go Down Moses/Joshua Fought the Battle, A Maori Hymn “Tama Ngakau Marie”, An African Hymn “Siya Hamba”, When the Saints/Goodnight Ladies, I’ll Be Your Candle on the Water, Schubert’s “To Music”, and The Rhythm of Life.

We’re an eclectic lot – tenors, altos and sopranos – men and women just singing together because we love it. Ineke accompanies us on guitar for the Cohen piece and it sounds great. For the last piece, Rhythm of Life, Cherry joined Dawn on piano because it’s written for two piano parts and that gave it a bit of zing. Here we all are:

And here are the two pianists:

Then yesterday we did a repeat performance at the local retirement home, Wharekaka, and the residents enjoyed that. One gentleman in particular was especially appreciative, calling out after each item, “lovely, lovely! The sopranos are lovely!” So that went down a treat.

Now we have a break for a month, and Ineke and I are keen – or slightly mad – to plan a show to raise funds for the renovation of the town hall!

 

Growing grapes in a cool climate?

Well, yes, but this?

These hills are known locally as the three canoes, or the waka of Kupe, because they look like three upturned canoes. This morning we awoke to snow on the waka.

The photos say it all.

 

Catching up with the blog

I’ve been most remiss lately – haven’t updated the blog since we pressed the Syrah on Ben’s birthday and being busy is no excuse but it will just have to do. That Syrah is now in barrel, with tannins and fruit tasting good already. We certainly feel a lot more confident about winemaking than we did this time last year.  So that’s one more task ticked off before we head off overseas in late July, or at least we hope to head off overseas. At the moment it’s an exercise of “will we, won’t we?” as the hysteria over swine flu rages. Not that we are frightened of a few sniffles, but the last thing we want is to be pulled aside and shoved into quarantine in Singapore for a week, throwing all our plans into disarray.

Meanwhile, in an extraordinary effort to make the local medical centre mortgage free, the local people over the past couple of years have staged successful fund-raising events, including, about two weeks’ ago, an art auction at which some real bargains could be had. The standard of artworks was exceptionally high – Gretchen Albrecht, Grahame Sydney, Anna Stichbury, Robin White, Matt Guild, Tim Wilson, Stephen Allwood  - even artists I didn’t like but there was no rubbish. At the viewing, we fell in love with two works, “Light on the Tararuas” by Jane Sinclair, and “The Riding Lesson” by Piera McArthur. Unfortunately we couldn’t get back to the auction because we had visitors, but amazingly, both these works didn’t sell and we were able to purchase them after the event. We collected them on Saturday and now have them hanging.

The weather’s been very kind for several days, enabling me to plant all the perennials I bought from Doreen at Nikau Hill Gardens in Marton, who really does sell high quality plants. Then I covered the ground between them with wet newspaper and mulched them with pooey straw from the chookhouse. The garden’s starting to come together now. Here’s a photo taken across the perennial bed, over the pavers and the herbs and in the background is where the orchard is going (the fruit trees arrive next month).

The bantams, Pip and Squeak (not their real names), were also happy that their little house was cleaned out of the old straw so they can nestle into the clean pea straw in their warm, macrocarpa-lined, abode. Actually, it was a brand new kennel bought for Taja but she refused to sleep in it.

Colin’s also been able to get out and mow/mulch the entire vineyard in this good weather, prior to pruning, which gets underway in a few weeks. It looks a picture now. We’re into our programme of sustainability. This photo’s taken looking down the valley, through the lower terrace of pinot noir.

This is the last light of the day, even though it’s four o’clock the big hill already blocks the sun from the upper terrace. But you can see the blue sky – even in mid-winter on a glorious Wairarapa day we still get those azure blue skies, with the frost machine silhouetted against the light.

And that’s it in the outdoors department for a while, unfortunately. Tomorrow the southerly blast will be back again. Snow will be touching the tips of the Rimutakas, and I still have about 100 daffodil bulbs to plant.

 

Processing Syrah

Queen’s Birthday Weekend in New Zealand – the first weekend in June – means we have a public holiday on the Monday, and this year it was the coldest weekend I can remember in many a long year. We woke up on Sunday to snow on the hills:

We’d made the decision to press the Syrah on the Saturday. Ben, Colin’s youngest son, came over from Wellington on the train for the day, it being his birthday. First we pumped 1000 litres of free-flow Syrah into ‘Annabel’, the stainless steel tank. Then I changed into shorts and an old hoodie, with only a baker-boy hat for warmth, and climbed into the 2000 litre tank and shovelled the fruit into buckets for Colin to haul up and out and tip into the white 550 litre tank, on to the trailer. A messy business:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fruit filled one 550 litre tank, and about a quarter of a second. This was taken next door to Te Hera Vineyard, the winery of our neighbour John Douglas, and pressed in his red wine press. It’s a slow process.

 

John’s on the left, with Ben centre and Colin on the right, slightly out of focus but it was a freezing cold day and we weren’t standing still for long.

The Syrah berries were interesting. Unlike Pinot Noir, they stubbornly hold their shape as long as they can, even in the press, and burst through those wooden slats you can see, even exploding up to the ceiling of John’s winery, dripping down over his hair and back. We had quite a fun time over there. But it’s great seeing the cassis-coloured juice pour out from the fruit – we pressed another 500 litres out of the fruit before we stopped when the tannins started to taste too bitter.

This took the whole day – 8am to 5.30pm with no stops for lunch or cuppas. Hard work but very satisfying, and boy do you appreciate that glass of wine at the end of the day, and the long hot bath. The other two very happy customers were the pigs, who are still gorging themselves on the pressed grapes taken out of the wine press. I fully expected to go down on Sunday morning and find them moaning about having hangovers, but no. They have red snouts, and they’ve made a good job of levelling the pile of fruit, but they are really enjoying their diet of sweet Syrah.

For now the pressed juice is settling. Tomorrow we’ll pump it all back together into the 2000 litre tank, then this weekend it will go into barrels.

 

The Un-Glamorous Side to Wine Making

Today I realised one of the benefits of being a thin wine maker when I had to clean out the tanks and containers. Yesterday, after we tested the Viognier and the Ph was down to the required level, we pumped the premier 200 litres off into our new Italian stainless steel tank which has a lid with an inflatable seal and a fermenting bung so it keeps all oxygen off the wine:

Then we blended the remainder of the premier ferment with the ferment which we’d left in the “Annabel” tank, which had been fermenting too fast (becomes too dry) and pumped it into an oak barrel. It will still have some yeast cells in it, but the yeast will counteract the oak. We don’t want to over-oak the fruit. Here it is in the barrel, with its own little fermenting bung:

So just now I had to crawl into this little hole in “Annabel” and scrub out her insides with a steel wool so she’s ready to take the Syrah juice this weekend. Lord knows what anyone would have thought if they’d come to the door of the winery and seen my butt sticking out out of the 1200 litre stainless steel tank, legs, stretched across the winery floor, gumboots attached. I must say though, it was a lovely smell inside that tank.

The cap on the Syrah has dropped and we’ll let it sit this week. It’s a gorgeous colour with the look and smell of cassis. Would make a lovely fabric:

To put it in context, this is a shot taken a bit further back:

So it’s been too busy to go riding, to go biking, to do anything else but look after the wine. The Pinot Gris is selling like hot cakes. I called into Martinborough Winemaker Services this morning to collect another ten cases to take to Wellington tomorrow, and Lewis was as pleased as Punch in their brand new, huge, warehouse. It was amazing to see all our James wines in their own special corner, now much easier to locate when we need them. Quite inspiring to see all those cases stacked up high, knowing all that wine comes out of our ground here. But, enough romanticising, back to the steel wool, the rubber gloves, head down, butt up.

 

It just gets better

I ended the last journal entry with a note about some thrilling news. Well, there have been two lots. First, we collected our labelled 2008 Pinot Gris, and we think it looks really classy:

The day I brought ten boxes home from Martinborough Winemakers’ Services, Simon Grove from the Martinborough Wine Centre came out and took two boxes for a promotion. The next day, before we could even get it to Wellington, Shed 5 restaurant, and Pravda restaurant, from the Nourish Group, already had it on their wine lists. Then three days later, Arbitrageur also added it to their wine list.

Once again, this wine was made by Jane Cooper at Matahiwi and she’s very pleased with the result. It’s a lovely pinot gris, not too dry. You can still taste the fruit.

The other good news came from over the road at Escarpment. I dropped off samples of our 2008 Syrah, which was made by Larry McKenna, and our 2009 Syrah, to test for the total acid (t/a) and ph.  The 2008 has been in six oak barrels in our winery since May 2008, topped up by us, and Larry confirmed the malo has now completed and it is “exactly where we want it to be, it’s about right” with the ph at 3.59 and the t/a at 6.2. So when we’ve finished plunging the 2009 syrah and racked it off into barrels, we’ll look at bottling that 2008 syrah.

The 2009 syrah’s test results were also very good with the ph at 3.42 and the t/a at 7, according to Larry “it’s okay…I’d personally leave it alone, maybe add acid when it’s finished fermenting.” This from the master winemaker himself, who doesn’t tell you what you want to hear. So we are well pleased.

 

Que Syrah Syrah

Whatever will be, will be. A damn fine wine, that’s what it will be.

Jancis Robinson  calls Syrah “one of the noblest black grape varieties, if nobility is bestowed by an ability to produce serious red wines capable of ageing magestically for decades” (The Oxford Companion to Wine, 1994, Oxford University Press). Of all our four grape varieties, Syrah certainly looks the most picturesque in the vineyard.

The bunches almost look like those wax or plastic grapes your nana used to have in fruit bowls, when grapes were far too expensive for working people to buy. It’s a tricky grape for us to grow (like Viognier) because for our cool climate it ripens late and we have to wait for the grapes to shrivel a little, to soften, before we harvest. On the other hand, there’s a risk that if they’re left too long on the vine they lose a lot of their flavour. We have 2000 vines, and we picked on Monday, with Nick’s pickers. John Porter brought his destemmer over to Redbank, which sat over our new Italian 2000 litre stainless steel tank. Here are the grapes falling into the tank:

It was hard work, lifting the picking bins up to John on the new platform, but fun, with everyone working away trying to keep up with the pickers. That’s John up on the platform, Nick Hoskins passing up bins, and me in the background (I think I’m washing equipment having just poured the yeast into the Viognier). We quickly filled our tank – almost too full as it turned out – so we have 2000 litres of Syrah 2009. The brix came in at 25 – perfect. We couldn’t have asked for better. Today I took a sample over to Larry McKenna at Escarpment and he’s doing a Ph and T/A (total acid) test for us so it will be interesting to see what that comes in at. I also took a sample of our 2008 Syrah, which Larry made and which has been in barrels in our winery since May 2008, for the same tests, so we’ll see if that’s ready for bottling.

Last night, Wednesday, Colin and I mixed up the Syrah yeast – it takes two hours to get it to the right temperature – then innoculated the Syrah. Now we have to plunge the cap four times a day. Colin gets up at 6am for the first plunge. I do two during the day, and he does the fourth when he gets home at night. It’s incredibly hard, physical work, and when you lift the lid off the tank the CO2 hits you in the face. But it’s nice working in the winery; taking the temperature of the juice, making sure it’s not getting too warm, putting your ear to the tanks and listening to the incredible noises of the ferment. When I do my plunging I put on some Maria Callas and work my way through about 20 arias, figuring if the diva can put so much energy into her voice, I can try and equal the energy into the Syrah. And who knows, maybe some good Verdi and Puccini helps make some beautiful wine. Did you ever read “Like Water For Chocolate”? Well, there you go.

And in the middle of all this excitement, we had some more thrilling news. You can read about that in the next blog instalment…

 

Viognier 2009

What a weekend. On Saturday we worked until we dropped. We initially thought we would pick and press the Viognier in one day but the best laid plans always go awry. We began picking 9.15 in the morning, after a good breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. Just as well, because except for grapes, that was all we would have a chance to eat until dinner that night. Colin and I picked 700 kg of Viognier by ourselves. It was the hardest work I think I’ve ever done in my life! We’re both tall people and our vines aren’t low-growing, but some of the ground is a little uneven and the vines are young so are still dipping a little. Plus Viognier is what you’d call a “free spirit” vine. It doesn’t behave itself but rambles around and the grape bunches grow every which way, including upwards, which means they can entangle themselves around the wires. But boy, what lovely, fat, golden, ripe, luscious fruit.Kete was amazing. She stayed with us all day, trying to help by first driving the tractor.Then when that didn’t work.She turned to quality control.And when she was satisfied we were picking to a very high standard.She just kept us company.

As we filled the picking bins, we pushed them under the rows, then I started off driving the Kubota tractor along the rows while Colin picked up and put the full bins on the low, narrow trailer. However, I was terrified (I’d only had one lesson on tractor driving) so Colin took over and I picked up – a back-breaking job as each bin weighs around 10kg and you have to do it virtually on the run. You can see them stacked on the trailer behind the VW in this picture:We finished this at 6pm, just on dark, and luckily it was cold so we backed the trailers full of grapes into the winery and the barn and arranged to take them in to Roger at Stonecutter Winery the next morning for pressing. We barely had enough energy to sink into a bath, lift our dinner into our mouths, then fall into bed.The Italian press is this cylinder with a diaphragm inside which inflates then gently presses the grapes. It takes two hours per pressing and our 700kg took two pressings. Here’s our first juice coming out into the catcher.Then it was a case of pumping the juice into our 550litre plastic tank, strapping it carefully to the trailer and driving slowly back to Redbank and pouring the first lot of juice into our second plastic tank – the first 2009 Viognier to come home:After repeating this process with the second pressing, we decided to settle the juice in the two tanks as we now had just too much for one. I added the bentonite, stirred it up, and left it to settle overnight The brix was 25.

Next day, Monday, I took the brix again, and in one tank it had gone up to 26, and in the other it was 25, so it was perfect. John Porter (Porters’ Pinot) arrived with his pump, and because we had more juice than anticipated, we abandoned our original plan of fermenting the Viognier in our new Italian 200litre stainless steel tank and an oak barrel. Instead we decided to pump it into a 1200 litre stainless steel tank we bought from John some months ago. The juice had settled by this stage, leaving sludge at the bottom, so into the tank, “Annabel”, it went. Then we mixed up the yeast, starting it off at 39 degrees, then gradually adding juice to get it down to 20 degrees before adding it to the juice through the top of “Annabel”. Today, Tuesday, the Viognier smells lovely and if you put your ear to the aperture at the top of the tank you can hear a crackling and a popping so the fermenting is underway. Kapai.

Next blog instalment – HIP HIP, SYRAH!

 

Here we go

Tomorrow we pick the Viognier. The weather forecast is for southerlies (chilly) with showers, but we can’t let the grapes sit on the vines any longer. The last test came in with the brix at 26 and some of the grapes are raisin-like, which is good. This morning I had a crash course with David Bull at Cabbage Tree, so now I have to mix the Bentonite (clay-like stuff )which will take the protein out of the juice, and take out some of the nutrients at the beginning to stop the ferment at the end. I also watched while David added settling agent, pectonase, and “meta” (potassium metabisulphide – an antioxidant) to Chardonnay he and Winifred picked in the last two days. This is what Colin and I shall have to do on Saturday to the juice after we have pressed it at Stonecutter Winery up the road. Then we prove and add the yeast on Sunday. Am I nervous? A little. My head is swirling, but I took careful notes, and just thought back to my days as a feature writer for North & South magazine, when I had to fully understand what the interviewee was telling me so I could go back to my desk and write an article which my readers could understand. In situations like that, you have to jettison your ego and ask questions that make you look completely stupid because if you don’t understand, your readers won’t understand. And if I didn’t understand what David was explaining to me, there was no way Colin was going to understand the information I have to pass on to him tomorrow when we have pressed our precious Viognier.

I also had a practice at plunging the cap of David’s Pinot Noir, a job I shall have to do four times a day for our Syrah, which we are picking on Monday. It was very – what can I say? – physical. I will emerge from this vintage looking like a Russian wrestler.

Meanwhile, Rowan and the crew have removed the nets from the Pinot Noir and the Pinot Gris and the vineyard is looking beautiful as it prepares for the next stage, pruning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this isn’t our vineyard, but a lovely scene on the way into town. It’s an empty old cottage I once photographed when it was waist-high with summer grass. Now, glimpsed through the autumn colours of Te Kairanga vines, it’s just as alluring.