Have a look at the winery! It’s bursting at the seams. With all the fruit now harvested, all the work is inside, which is a challenge due to our space constraints. There are lots of ferments all underway, so every little bit of floor space is precious.
Now the ferments are all underway record keeping becomes very important, not only for tracking how the ferments are progressing, but also to be able to
track a wine back from the bottle to it’s origins in the vineyard. Due to inappropriate behaviour by a small number of wineries, regulations are now in place to ensure what is in the bottle is what the consumer expects it to be. So, we must be able to show from what vineyard grapes were picked and what wine(s) was made from them. Then we need to track any blending, how/where wines are aged and finally confirm exactly what went into each bottle – and that the label accurately reflects that. Every vineyard in New Zealand is now subject to these regulations, and in fact is audited annually on them. Quite a bureaucratic process but unavoidable. We track everything on an in-house developed PC database.
Raining again today and the forecasts are not encouraging. I feel very sorry for vineyards with any grapes still hanging out. This is a view from our winery office window - not too hard to work up there!
