Vintage officially over

The 2011 vintage finished on Friday the 13th with the last 2 tanks of Pinot noir pressed off and it being Tao & Greg’s last day. During the last week we got to enjoy some impressive in-house cooked lunches (Allan – beautiful monkfish dish, Catherine – freshly sourced duck, Tao – Spanish tortilla & paella,  Greg – Grans lamb), an enjoyable post-vintage dinner at Medici with a number of the other Martinborough wineries,  plus a day’s outing to the rugged Pahoa / Glendhu coast. The week finished with the team enjoying the magnum of Bollinger (plus quite a few other bottles of wine!) at Pip’s place on Friday evening to celebrate the end of harvest & the night team winning the dig out challenge (yes Derek pulled us through with a very impressive sub-5 minute time).

There are still a few white’s fermenting in the cellar & a lot of cleaning to be done, but there is a certain post-vintage feel to the winery now which is very quiet with only Jane here this week.  As with all vintages there were high’s & low’s but we had a great team & I think made some fantastic wines. I am pleased it is finally over but also flat at the same time that everyone is leaving & the buzz subsiding.

I won’t get to relax for long however as I am off to the States for a number of Complexity events on Sunday!

Author: Pip

Dig-out challenge goes down to the wire.

As the 2011 vintage is finally ramping down the dig-out challenge is still to be decided. We have dug out 32 tanks to date (having harvested 205 tonnes of quality PN), with another 3 to go. The challenge is poised in the balance with the decider being Derek who has been somewhat reluctant to date.

The day team lead by Allan has a slight lead over Pip’s night team. The times have been exceptionally fast with Pip setting an early lead of 6.4 minutes but this was beaten by Allan who after his birthday lunch & 21^st vintage celebration showed that it all comes down to experience & technique, blitzing all previous times by completing it under  5mins.  Tao (Spanish), Catherine (English) and Jane(Kiwi)  have all had a couple of goes & all improved their times significantly – so much so that Tao is now in 2^nd place. Greg (American) has dug out a large number but was only timed the once, for a very respectable 7 minutes. Blair couldn’t beat Allan & so is wanting another crack!

By the end of the week all our PN tanks will be empty for another year and another very successful (albeit long) Palliser harvest complete. We have had some great fruit and a great team so 2011 will be remembered as a year of a lot of PN but a very good one. The team has enjoyed a Jo Crabb (www. careme.co.nz) lunch every day accompanied by a wine which we have drunk blind for a bit of fun. It has to be said that not many times has anyone got the wine right! One of the more memorable wines was Allan’s first ever Palliser PN – the1991 which we drunk blind on his birthday & although had a bit of a vegetal nose the palate was incredibly vibrant, still with some lovely fruit, acidity & complexity – an incredibly interesting wine.

I will post the final results at the end of the week although if there isn’t another posting you can take it my team lost!!

Author: Pip