2013 Vintage Looking Good

Pinot Gris, 26 Nov. 2012.

I went out today to take the attached photos of Pinot Gris and could not help feeling we may be in for one of the really good vintages in 2013.

I know it is not a good thing to celebrate too early but the current vintage is looking great for us at Blue Rock. Our elevated and sloping vineyards meant no frost damage at all, compared to horror stories from  Central Otago where Spring frosts did huge damage in some regions. There were also reports of frost damage in parts of the Hawkes Bay and the Wairarapa.

We are looking at a harvest with the promise of both quality and quantity. There is a good bunch count per cane so what we need now is a good flowering through end November and the crop should be an excellent one. In fact, if the flowering is too good, we may be faced with having to fruit thin so we don't over-crop the vines.That is not a bad problem to have!

I did smile to myself when I took the photos as I was thinking I have been very lax in keeping my blog up to date. At one stage I had thought it would be interesting to take a single vine and post a picture of it each week through the season, but travel and other commitments got in the way. It was so lovely out there today that I am motivated to pick the idea up and follow it through from now on; let's see how I go!

Pinot Gris before flowering

I felt it would be good for those interested to see just how quickly vines grow through the season  and how much they change over time. For those not familiar with grapes, what you see here are very much potential grapes; these wee guys still have to flower and be pollinated before they develop into full sized berries. So, what we need over the next few weeks are warm days and gentle breezes for that to happen successfully. Rain and/or strong winds are not what we want - that just washes or blows the pollen away. I'll post photos of the same bunch over time so you can follow the development of the grapes.

Tough Vintage for 2012

I am currently travelling in Queensland, Australia, working with our major client's key stores; Vintage Cellars and First Choice. These are both top wine chains in the Australian market, with knowlegeable staff. The stores stock a great range of wines too. If you live in Australia, check them out sometime. Make sure you buy a bottle of Murdoch James Estate wine while you are there though!

Yesterday I was in a store in Brisbane and one of the team said " I would love to work on a vineyard and make wine, it must be great fun?".

I was prompted to say "Yes it is" but had to qualify the comment to "Yes it is, most of the time". The qualifier was because this year we had a very small vintage, due to cold, windy weather at flowering time, with the result that we had a much smaller fruit set than normal with some varieties. While our white harvest was top quality and good quantity, for some red varieties we had such small harvests that we will not be able to produce a wine from this vintage. An example is our 2012 Syrah. Such a small crop means it is not able to be bottled as a stand-alone wine. Does not sound so bad until you realise the implications; if there is no 2012 Blue Rock Syrah available, customers who enjoyed the 2011 and older vintages may change to something else before we release the 2013. Then we have to work with our retailers to rebuild the brand, and that equals time and money.

In other cases, like the Pinot Noir, the fruit was terrific quality, but the crop was down 40% per hectare. So we will make excellent wines from the Pinot Noir this year, but not a lot of it. We will just have sufficient wine to supply demand, so again sounds OK, until you dig deeper....

The cost per litre of wine is much higher in a small vintage than it is in a normal one. Think about it this way: we spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in the vineyard to grow our grapes. And we have to spend that regardless of harvest size. We need to prune, mow, tuck, hand pick, trellis, etc with a full crop in mind. Now, if we are targeting (say) 200 tonnes of pinot a year, and we only get 100 tonnes, we have still spent the money - it is a sunk cost regardless of what size crop we get. So in this scenario (2012) effectively our cost of production had doubled. If the normal cost of wine per bottle was $10, now it is $20. Can we increase our wine $10 per bottle to recover that? Sadly, the answer is "no way". In the current tight market, no retailer, importer or distributor is going to allow wineries to increase prices $10 a bottle, just because of a small vintage.

So, what happens is that wineries have to absorb the extra costs and hope to recover it from other vintages; again easier said than done. This is more so with smaller boutique wineries where they have no way to shed expenses. The big industrial producers who harvest with machines, buy grapes in, and have other scale benefits are less at risk. So think about that when you pick a wine up in a wineshop; in tough times, the small producers need coonsumer understanding of their need to recover costs. Maybe spend a few bucks extra and don't buy the big brand label that is on 'special'? Ask a store team member to recommend something a just little more expensive and enjoy it in the knowledge the extra $5 or $6 dollars is going to help a small, passionate producer somewhere. It will probably be a better wine too!

Hence my qualified answer.

Yes, vineyards are a great way to make a living, but make no mistake; they are not an easy way to make a living. Rest assured, boutique winemakers don't do it just for the money!

Project Update

Well, vintage 2012 is over. A smaller harvest than anticipated, but nice quality fruit to work with. We are pleased to have made some very good wines, and having the nice new winery to work in really made it all go very smoothly. It was a little stressful leading up to vintage, with the builders still working on site just a few days before picking commenced! But in the end it all worked out fine.

The new fermenters shown in the accompanying images worked perfectly and the new sorting table will have helped us take a big step up in quality. The new space has also helped give us the ability to try things we have only dreamed of in the past; for example barrel fermenting some of the varieties.

All in all you can look forward to some very interesting wines from our 2012 efforts.

But, even writing about these exciting developments, brings me back to one of my pet hates - Excise Duty. We have just been advised there will be a further increase in Excise Tax on 1st July.

With what we have just spent in capital improvements, new tanks and new barrels, on top of a small harvest, we really should be thinking about price increase to compensate, however in the current wine market that is just not possible. And the increase in Excise Duty will further erode margins.

Remember this is one of those hidden taxes all governments love. Like Excise Duty on fuel it just keeps money flowing into government revenue in a manner not visible to the general public. And it is linked to the consumer price index, so it increases nicely each year too, another plus for the tax collector. The Excise on wine is now over $2 per bottle and the winery must pay this each time they make a sale. Do the math; if you buy a $10 bottle of wine, over 20% is Excise, add that to the 15% G.S.T. and government is doing very nicely thank you!

So my question is such a tax needed on wine? The answer is no.

Why? Several reasons:
1. It does not make sense to penalise a successful and growing export industry by increasing the cost of doing business in the NZ home market. Almost every successful business starts from a solid platform at home and then pushes out to exports. All that such a tax does is advantage cheap imported wines; be they bulk wines from Australia, or wines from countries with lower production costs or subsidies (like Argentina and Chile), thus impacting the viability of New Zealand wineries.
2. It is a tax burden that unfairly selects just one industry and adds enormously to their operating costs, while other industry sectors avoid it. Plus, the cost of tracking and reporting the excise duty is another burden in an already over-regulated industry
3. It is an indirect tax that could have been phased out and replaced at the introduction of GST, as many other indirect taxes were (e.g. sales taxes). As a consequence it now means consumers end up paying double taxes on all alcoholic beverages, regardless of type, which is clearly unfair

4. Apologists for excise taxes say they are only levied on supposed harmful products (e.g. fuel, tobacco, alcohol, etc) but in fact it is certainly not clear to me that all the excise collected by government is returned the community via initiatives related to the taxed product.
5. On top of that, excise is also a crude tool that does not differentiate between the wide range of alcoholic beverages on the market. It is certainly not the drink of choice for the binge generation; look at alcopops and spirits if you want to address that concern.  I accept a new approach is needed to manage alcohol abuse, but why penalise the vast majority of wine-lovers who enjoy and respect wine, by treating them like the problem society really needs to be focused on?

What has been done about the excise tax problem? Well the New Zealand Winegrowers organisation (a body that represents all NZ vineyards), has tried worked hard for change to the excise regime for many years, but to no avail. I know it must be hard negotiating with government officials who fail to see the big picture, but we must persevere.

That's because the consequence of excise continuing to increase each year, will result in more small vineyards in New Zealand failing. To me, continuing a tax that disadvantages Kiwi wineries in so many ways is foolish. It is not being overly pessimistic to point out that unless something changes small family-owned boutique NZ wineries with slim margins are not going to survive. That will not only be to their cost, but also will lead to diminished consumer choice and reduced employment opportunities.

Lab Work

I sometimes think a lot of folk get the impression that wine is all about growing the grapes in the vineyard and then converting them to wine in the winery. That is true to a large extent, as is the reality that the making of a great wine comes down to the creative talents of the winemaker. There are no formulas to follow slavishly, unless you are one of the big producers who are looking for the same basic wine year after year.

But there are a lot of technical things small wineries can do to help ensure we make a good wine and avoid risks. At Murdoch James Estate we have a small laboratory where we test sample from the vineyard before harvest to check sugar levels, and during ferments to track the conversion of those sugars to alcohol. We also test for things like acidity. This technical detail is then paired with winemaker Carl's judgement and palate to deliver the final wine.


For the vintage Maria, our Administration Assistant, worked with Carl in the winery over vintage to help with processing, plunging and pressing. But she also did most of the lab work; a very important task she completed with skill.






This year's grapes are now in, and nearly all the ferments are complete. It has been a lovely harvest and the Pinot Noir should be excellent this year. Fine weather made harvest a breeze, and the teamwork was terrific. Now the vineyard looks a treat as the autumn colours are coming out. In fact, when I was driving into work this morning, the poplars at the gate were stunning and I had to take a photo - not a bad place to work is it!!??
                                                        

First pick 2010

$%#@*&!

This wine business is hard work!

We started our 2010 harvest last Thursday (8th April 2010) and, while we expected a smaller crop than last year doue to the bad weather at flowering and the cold weather in January last, as the grapes are coming in, it is much smaller than we thought. In some varieties, particularly the chardonnay, we are down over 50%. Pinot and Syrah is not so bad, but also smaller crops. If you think about it that means for the same inputs, we get less grapes (read that as less wine to sell), and at a higher average cost per tonne. If we have to buy in grapes to plug any demand gaps, that is a double-whammy on the budget and not pleasant to contemplate.

Those of you who know me know that I am nothing if not an optomist! So, yes there is a silver lining to the cloud - small cops, but also great quality. Winemaker Carl thinks this is the best quality Pinot Noir grapes we have harvested ever, so watch out for the 2010 releases.

Now in an ideal world, one would simply charge more per bottle, but the wine world does not work that way. In fact, due to serious oversupply out of Australia and Marlborough, the pressure on price is downwards. Just holding prices flat is pretty good in the current environment. So we have to absorb these costs with their negative impact on profitability. While our wines are very highly regarded, it is not possible to apply price increases at present. And just when we were starting to make a good profit - ah well, no-one told me wine-making was an easy path to riches.........

That brings me back to our new social media strategy, which is designed to to drive sales through non-traditional channels, where costs are not so high. For example, selling on-line direct from Murdoch James means we don't lose margin to middle-men.We are also looking at working with innovative on-line marketers in international markets, and all our communications tools are now in place to underpin that (Blog, Twitter, Face-book, Website, etc) so hopefully the message is getting out there that Murdoch James Estate is determined to make the most of these new technologies to communicate with our potential customers and give them the confidence to try our wines. The more I enter into this medium, the more it reinforces to me how dramatically and quickly the way wines are being purchased is changing. I have an emerging view that one day, apart from on-premise sales, we will be selling all our wines one way or other over the internet.


Now, I'm off to Vietnam and Hong Kong this week to promote our wines, so some interesting posts to follow.

Some prose from Jill

I found these musings from Jill in the winery yesterday. Lovely bit of prose that captures the spirit of vintage! Thought I would share with you.......







The highlight of the winery year - Easter - where
grapes have turned from green to red, the birds are ready
Easter fare for them despite bridal veils of drooping nets
over vines, gas guns booming, humans with guns on quad bikes.

This is the time when the radio hits max volume
in the winery getting the guys in the mood
First pick is preceded by weeks of winery housekeeping
Would their mothers see how these tanks do shine

The first day the grapes come in, the day is fine.
Gleaming press, spotless tanks, pumps all primed.
White bins come in full of Pinot gleaming the team move into action
full of enthusiasm this is the sum total of the years mowing, pruning, weeding.

To the beat of triple four time, a bit of rock and roll
The press whines and thumps and does it's thing, to Carl's time,
the pumps send the juice on it's way, through snaking hoses
The big grey fermenters fill up slowly, huge ingesters, and
yeasts start to glug and bubble away.

Not without a glitch or two, a torch dropped in a tank
settling down through the bubbling brew
it must have thought - ah heaven I see the light!
No help for it, can't have a battery stew
The pumps are manned, the tank is drained,
the torch retrieved, red treasure replaced, it's alright again.

More bins arrive, more grapes to crush, arms haul the bins
grapes, wasps, and purple mush, all grist to the team
who sift and pass the quality stock and toss the rubbish.
There is a bunch of cows down the road who wait for
this, stems and skin, discards in bins, they
recognise the tractor, are at the gate in anticipation.

Down the road, two weeks of toil is starting to show
early starts in the dark, leaving at two am shows the mark
on weary faces, tired arms, stumbling gait, the dogged way
they greet the next pile of bins. One cellar hand remarks
I have a new flat, one week down the track I don't know the colour
of it's outsides, I leave home and arrive back again in the dark.

Seventy five per cent is done, on its way to being wine.
The weather holds, the forecasts followed, rain or shine?
The tardy ones, Syrah working hard on the hill to ripen
basking in all day sun. Cab Franc, Cab Sauv, hang in
there too, among dying leaves, reluctant to go in The Bin.

But the will is still there, the radio still marks the time
Weary limbs respond, wind and sun dried faces shine from
The trailer for the umpteenth time as it comes down the hill.
The winery team look up from endless hosing, cleaning bins
and welcome them all in.


You and I know after years of vintage days,
the winery team live for this time, the whole year points
towards this time, when grapes come in, the quality
surveyed, the tons marked down, the tanks filled up,
barrels in the cellar wait, the vehicle is nature, cruel or kind
and the driver is of course - the wine.

Hand Harvesting

Wednesday 16th April


Another beautiful day – will it last? We are all hoping so. We harvested Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc today, so I have attached images of the team picking the grapes, as well as images of the fruit and the processing. I hope you find it interesting. There are more images in our website gallery too. Click on this link: http://www.murdochjames.co.nz/gallery/simpleviewer/index.html

We pick everything by hand, and train the team to only collect the best fruit. Anything with mildew or unripe fruit is left behind for the birds (did you know one green grape in 100 will have an impact on the taste of the final wine!). Only with the best fruit can you hope to make world class wine. That’s why we never use a mechanical harvester. They are like big vacuum cleaners that suck everything up; ripe, unripe and diseased, together with bits of leaf and stalks. Then we sort one more time at the winery before the fruit goes into the press. There is a great image of the Sauvignon Blanc being gently pressed below

We were thrilled with the quality of the Sauvignon Blanc this year, and were also fortunate to have a small part of the crop which developed botrytis. Known as the 'Noble Rot' this mould shrivels the berries and concentrates that flavour, so we have decided to keep that fruit separate and a desert wine which we will call 'Noble Sauvignon'.