Vintage 2010
Every year begins for us with pruning and the expectation and anticipation builds over the next 11 months.The weather during this past vintage has been unusual.
Spring, September 2009, brought us a mix of very hot, sunny days with some long cold wet periods in between. Flowering was good on the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but unsettled weather caused over flowering and reduced the crop level of the Sauvignon Blanc. The grape berry size remained small. As summer progressed temperatures remained below average. It was not until later in February that things started to warm up. Since then we have had the most wonderful weather, clear dry days with light winds. The grapes hastened their ripening and the flavour development process was well balanced and consistent.
Vintage usually starts for us with picking the bubbly. We try to time our harvests according to the biodynamic calender. This year was no exception and we harvested some crisp Chardonnay for our 2010 Blanc de Blancs.
The next fruit into the winery was Pinot Noir. We have harvested Pinot from three key geographic regions in Wairau Valley this year. From 5 different vineyards and around 18 separate blocks and over 9 different clones. Yields have been quite low despite a reasonable flowering in the Pinot Noir, so the flavours have been really intense.
We ferment the Pinot Noir in vineyard blocks as it ripens and is picked. The grapes are all hand-picked and destemmed into tank to soak and ferment. Once ferment is finished and the caps start to sink the wine is drained from the tanks. Each tank is pressed separately to keep each clonal set and vineyard separate. This allows greater choice at blending, expressing the individual vineyard terrior.
Sauvignon crops have been quite small for us this year averaging about 5 to 7 tonnes to the hectare (35 - 48 hl/ha). This has resulted from a combination of factors including cool flowering, but also some very careful pruning and shoot thinning by the vineyard crew. We pick our Sauvignon very early in the morning (4am) when the fruit is at its coldest. This means the fruit can retain all the wonderful aromatics that the Marlborough climate gives us. We pick it into small 1000 litre bins and press it cold without crushing to minimise skin contact and phenolics.
The stony silts at our Rapaura Road vineyards provide ripe passionfruit, melon and citrus flavours into the Sauvignon Blanc. Our Winsome vineyard grows on heavy Orthic Clays. These soils give us more structure and some bright greengage plum, gooseberry and nettle flavours.
No pesticides or herbicides are used to grow the fruit. We use careful canopy management and benign biological products to manage any disease. Weeds under the vines are managed using a Braun undervine weeding machine and by hand weeding. We also make loads of compost from our winery marc and prunings to fertilise the soil, encourage good soil biology for healthy vines.
All the Gewurztraminer and the Riesling is organically grown on our Winsome block. The heavy clay soils mean that no irrigation was used and it has resulted in a small crop of lovely perfumed fruit. The only problem we had was to stop the hand-picking team from eating all the grapes themselves!
The 2010 vintage provided us with exceptional quality and the wines have great concentration and balance.
Claire & Mike Allan
Winemakers
Fermenting our Pinot Noir
