Sheep versus Machines - Who Wins?

In past vintages we have always used machines or people to do our leaf plucking. The plucking is intended to remove leaf material from around the bunches so that sunlight can penetrate through to the berries. It also helps air circulate and so reduce the risk of fungal disease. A good leaf-pluck is a major contributor to growing quality grapes for our wine-making team to work with.

This year we did a trial block using sheep. Were they better than machines? Well have a look at the two images and see if you can pick the work the sheep did!

Yes, the one on the right - a terrific job, a much more complete and thorough pluck, with huge savings in time, manpower and expenses. On top of that, they fertilise as they go! And we can reduce use of tractors with very positive environmental benefits. We are so happy we are going to set up as much of the rest of our vineyard as we can to use sheep more widely for future vintages. The secret is a big mob, in a small space (around 3-5 ha), pluck that block, then move to the next one. One thing that surprised us was that the sheep showed a preference for certain vines over other - maybe they are secret grape connoisseurs.

We have always been concerned that the sheep would eat or damage the grapes, hence this year's small trial. We did not need to worry - they ate all the leaves, and did not touch the grapes. We are converts!

For those following the progress of my selected Pinot Gris vine through the 2013 vintage, it is the top left photograph - sadly it did not get the sheep treatment - that will now be next year.

Time to learn a new word? Try Veraison!

This is what we have been hanging out for, veraison. Which is what?? Well read on: There are many European words that have been adopted by New World winemakers often because one French or German word can replace a sequence of English ones. Véraison is no exception: it is a wine-making term meaning "the onset of ripening". It is originally French, and the official definition of veraison is "change of color of the grape berries." Veraison represents the transition from berry growth to berry ripening, and many important changes occur in berry development occur at this time.


The accompanying image shows what I mean, so berries are still green, other partially coloured and some quite dark. What we want now is warm weather for a couple of weeks to ripen all the berries fully. It is this phase of development that gives the sugar levels and flavours we need, while the acidity drops and the seeds mature. It is this ripening which makes grapes so attractive to birds, and requires the nets we talked about in the last posting to keep them away!

This year we are very late in reaching veraison and so are keeping everything crossed for fine weather over the next month, leading into harvest. We have a winemaker from France joining us this year for vintage, so I will have even more French lessons for you all soon. 


On the social media front, we now have a Facebook page in place for Murdoch James Estate http://www.facebook.com/pages/Murdoch-James-Estate/306091360747  - now to use it. Meantime have a look and tell me how you'd like it to evolve! I also recently got my first Twitter spam messages, but at the same time am getting lots of encouragement to persevere. Good feedback on the blog too, so if any readers would like a specific topic covered, let me know via the comments section

Bud Burst 2009

A stunning day here today - warm and dry. And, we have bud burst which is great, but about two weeks earlier than anticipated. With bud burst the cycle starts all over again – it is very exciting, and now we’ll watch over the vines as the grow foliage and then grapes!

Meantime, for the next 3 or 4 weeks, all we have to do is worry about frost! We had two severe ones yesterday and today, both reaching minus 5 degrees C, which had all the Martinborough wineries running their frost machines, flying helicopters, lighting their frost pots and anything else that they can do to avoid risk of frost damage. Fighting frost is an incredible task, and very interesting – if you want to know anything about it, drop us a note at info@murdoch-james.co.nz

We use water sprinklers on our Waiata block, and in the morning the frozen water is a beautiful sight. At our Blue Rock vineyard the sloping ground protects from frost. Why? Because frost behaves water, and so runs off sloping ground. We are very fortunate to have the only large vineyard in Martinborough planted on a hillside. Not having frost risk on our largest block is a very valuable benefit, and saves tens of thousand of $’s each year.