Winemaker's Comment - April 2003

I keep starting to write this, then when I come back to the keyboard, the weather has shifted again and everything I've written needs chucking away. 2003 is that sort of a vintage.

The Chardonnay has come in over the past week looking really nice, our cover crop programme does seem to be working very well with Chardonnay. We have also picked a lot of the Riesling; the first vintage ever that Riesling is beating Pinot into the winery. Our recent cold snap put all the Pinot into pause mode just a touch off being ready to pick. Now it's ripe and we are furiously picking from one block to the next, choosing each as the varied combinations of soils, rootstocks, and clones reach their optimal point. This is going to be a vintage where we really won't know where we stand until it is all in barrel, sorted out, and we have a chance to catch our breath and see what we've made; rather like 2000 in that respect (after 2002, my next favourite vintage).

But the new winery extensions are really helping. Everything is working wonderfully (tempting fate here, I know) and it really does pay dividends when time is tight and decisions have to be made, that you don't have distractions and delays because the technical process isn't happening the way you want it to. The new Chardonnay room is already full to the brim with barrels of fermenting wine, and the new underground Pinot hall looms cavernous, looking very large, but we need the space against the day when vine age pushes us to start keeping wines longer than a year in barrel. Judging by the 2002's, that time isn't too far away.

What to say about 2002? Certainly it has been a very fine vintage. We feel the Rieslings are definitely our best efforts to date and the critics have been kind enough to support that view: Vic Williams naming our Dry Riesling as New Zealand's top example for the 2002 vintage in his Penguin Guide; while Bob Campbell MW went for the Riesling in giving it the Cuisine Award for their top Riesling with a huge 6 point margin over the next wine. (Incidentally, we opted to be excluded from the Cuisine Top Ten, by virtue of the wine being hard to buy, since we didn't want a rush of trophy hunters calling the winery. However, we have kept some aside for our regular mail order customers.)

The Barrel Chardonnay has been the source of many sleepless nights. It took forever to ferment, we had to delay bottling because it hadn't finished malo-lactic fermentation and I was really getting pretty fed up with it. I'm pleased to say it has been a happy ending and we finally bottled it last week. For the first time ever, it didn't need significant fining and I'm happy to report that the stroppy youth has grown up rather complex, refined and elegant. It has the lowest new oak component we have ever put in our Barrel Fermented Chardonnay and is better for it. And then the Pinot. There are those who are calling 2002 the great vintage of Otago Pinot. We'd be a bit more cautious: yes, it is a very fine vintage, but it is hard for us to say what are the defining factors behind our 2002's: the increasing vine age at Elms is definitely starting to take us into new territory of wines with more complex, compound flavours, and away from the straight fruit palate. Structure is emerging, tannin is growing a bit of muscle. At the same time the Dijon Clones from our younger vineyards are adding some new profiles, as well as the impact of our new vineyard regime which is using cover crops and organic techniques rather than committing violent acts of control upon our vines.

There are many contributing factors, and we are hopeful that much of what has made the 2002's better wines is a result of more than the whim of one year. Certainly these are wines that will need a bit more time to unfold, but we are very excited by the potential they are showing.

The last thing I should mention about a very busy year for us has been our decision to withdraw from domestic distribution of our wines. Demand had become so strong, that we had been faced with the situation of being unable to offer our cellar door and mail order customers wine for most of the year, while distributors could sell their allocations pretty much anywhere they liked. Now we only supply direct, whether to a few fine wine retailers, some top restaurants, or to our personal customers. The benefit is that we have been able to keep enough wine to supply our long term private customers, offer a little more of our single Block wines, and be fairer to those who have been loyal to us in the past.

That's all for now, Pinot from Block 5 is coming in this morning, I'd better get back to the day job!

Cheers,
Blair Walter
Winemaker