The Vineyard Post

APRIL 2012: Season delivers sensational Sauvignon, perfect Pinot Noir

The last fruit of the 2012 harvest is in the winery and we’re grinning from ear to ear. The quality of the Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir has been absolutely sensational.

This year has been the coolest vintage overall in Marlborough since 1995. While we harvested less volume as a result, the slow ripening has added something special to the quality of fruit and intensity of flavour from across our whole single vineyard. We had the luxury of beautifully warm, dry weather over the three weeks of harvest, with only a single light rain sprinkling the vines early on.

Despite starting the harvest ten days later than usual, we finished comfortably on the 27^th of April. Our new harvester and our great team at the single estate meant we could harvest more fruit more quickly, so we were able to wait till our grapes reached the perfect level of flavour development and ripeness, before harvesting it very quickly.

In fact, the fruit this year is so good that early indications are that the 2012 vintage could be our best yet, so there will be great enjoyment for wine lovers when these wines hit the market later this year.

March 2012: SLOW RIPENING PRODUCED GREAT FRUIT FOR 2012 HARVEST

The unusually long, slow ripening this year is producing excellent fruit for our 2012 wines.

The slow ripening season has allowed our grapes to develop exceptional fruit flavour in tandem with increasing sugar levels, while the level of acidity is tapering off gradually. So we can harvest the fruit when the relative proportion of these three elements – fruit flavour, sugar and acidity – achieves its most appealing balance. 

We keep a close watch on the development of our fruit, testing sugar levels regularly. However, the final assessment of when to harvest is made by walking from block to block on our single vineyard and tasting the grapes off the vine.

We’re planning to start our harvest in early April. As usual, the hand-picked Pinot Noir for our super premium Resolute wines will be first. They grow on some of our oldest vines and we deliberately keep the cropping level very low, so each vine has less fruit to develop.

The first Sauvignon Blanc follows only days later, with Pinot Gris the last variety to come off the vines, usually ten days after the Sauvignon Blanc.

We’re in for a few heady weeks, but we’re sure the results will be worth it!

February 2012: COOLER SUMMER MEANS INTENSELY FLAVOURED PINOT NOIR

The cooler summer at our single vineyard in Marlborough will lift both the quality and intensity of our Pinot Noir even further this year.

As summer temperatures remain on the cool side, we’re expecting to start harvesting about ten days later than most years. While this won’t affect the usual good quality of our Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris, the slower ripening should have a positive effect on our Pinot Noir.

With a slower ripening, we can expect excellent balance between sugar ripeness and the flavour ripeness that brings depth and intensity to the wine. Having riper seeds in the berries also improves the tannin profile. All in all, this should give the 2012 Ara Pinot Noirs an outstanding soft, round flavour.

While we wait for the grapes to ripen fully, we have to keep greedy birds away. Fortunately we have help from our native falcon Dudley and his friends. Four of these rare birds are often seen patrolling the laden in fruit Ara vineyard. 

January 2012: RESPONDING SMARTLY TO CHANGING WEATHER

One of the fascinating things about growing wine is the ever-changing dynamics of weather and vineyard. What’s happening with the weather is constantly influencing what happens with our vines, and we have to respond smartly.

Cooler than normal weather has meant that the crop level is actually looking close to ideal now. With nature managing bunch sizes on its own, the outcome should be excellent fruit quality across the entire single estate.

At this time of year, we’re still out among the vines every day, removing a few lateral shoots and doing some careful leaf plucking by hand. This helps to ensure that there’s good airflow to keep the growing berries dry and healthy across our entire vineyard.

The cooler weather has also delayed the fruit development by a week or ten days. However, we still expect February to be as quiet as usual. For many of us, this will be the time to take a short break, so we can be back and ready to give it our all over harvest.

December 2011: FLOWERS, ROCKS AND BARRELS

Three things occupy us at Ara this month – flowers, rocks and barrels.

The flowers are grape flowers – the modest little blooms that will each become a grape a few months down the track. Good flowering means good fruit set, which means more berries in the bunch and, in all likelihood, more wine.

All our Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris vines are flowering well already, as is most of the Sauvignon Blanc. We’re helping the vines by lifting wires, training the shoots upward to make sure they catch maximum sun.

Meanwhile, we’re using these relatively quiet weeks to clear stones from the lanes between the vines. Because the vine rows on the Ara vineyard are spaced so tightly, we have to work harder to keep them clear, so we can get in easily to give the vines the hands-on attention they deserve. The tight spacing allows us to have more vines, with less fruit on each, so we get more intense flavours.

The stones will eventually be used to line the streams that cross our single estate. The stone lining keeps the streams clearer and stops erosion.

Over in the winery, we’re bottling the last of the Sauvignon from the 2011 vintage, while the Pinot Noir is now starting to come out of the barrels. This wine has matured and gained toasty, oaky flavours from the wood over the last eight months. Our very best Pinot Noir has the structure and intensity to gain from more oak exposure until just before harvest time.

November 2011: QUIETLY HELPING WHILE NATURE WORKS IT'S MAGIC

As the weather warms up and our vines put their energy into growing, we’re quietly giving nature a helping hand by guiding the vines.

Every year it’s an inspiring view, across the Ara single vineyard, healthy bright green leaves everywhere. Daily temperatures on the vineyard are rising, reaching the mid twenties °C (68 F) more frequently, but we’re still getting enough rain to give the vines all the moisture they need. Actually, the weather is perfect for the vine growth we want at this stage.

After the good even bud-burst we’ve had, most of our vines have a few shoots more than we’d ideally like. While we can leave them as is, we’ll be able to make better wine if we reduce the number of shoots a little, which we do by hand. Each shoot is expected to carry one or two bunches, so by thinning the shoots each vine will have fewer bunches to ripen. This enables them to produce riper, more intensely flavoured fruit for us to harvest in autumn.

It’s a detailed task that requires great care and attention so at Ara, our people tend the vines by hand because everything we do now ensures that the wine in your glass will be outstanding!

October 2011: EVEN BUDBURST A SIGN OF GOOD TIMES TO COME

October is a special time of year when nature reveals the promise of the harvest to come, the result of the vineyard team’s hard work through the winter pruning.

Across our single vineyard, for each of our varieties, the development of buds is remarkably consistent - which is a great advantage to have so early in the growing season. Sauvignon Blanc is at woolly bud stage, just beginning to show green tips. Pinot Noir is already showing its first leaf and Pinot Gris it’s second.

This means that each variety is developing across the vineyard at the same rate, and we can look forward to each block and variety being at the ideal level of ripeness at harvest time. This consistency helps us to create the high quality of wine we strive for, from each vintage.

The combination of consistent fruit development and that all our grapes come from a single vineyard, ensures that the wine has a distinctive character, expressing the place where it was grown.

Of course, to get those great results, our team are working hands on with every single vine in the vineyard, to deliver on spring’s promise. In a few weeks, we’ll begin shoot thinning. But more on that then.

September 2011: A JOB WELL DONE AS BUDS APPEAR

Pruning is complete, the first woolly buds are appearing on our Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris vines and the Sauvignon Blanc will soon follow suit... At this time, we keep a close watch on the birth of what will be our 2012 vintage wines.

The buds may be woolly, but that doesn’t mean they can always withstand the cold temperatures we can still get at this time of year! So we make sure our frost protection system is ready to help our precious vines if temperatures dip too low.

All our grapes are grown on a single vineyard so when our electronic monitors warn of dangerously low temperatures, we can be on site quickly to respond.

For instance, on the morning of 17 September, the temperature on parts of the vineyard dipped to a low -2.5ºC. We used our sprinkler system to immediately protect our Pinot Noir and young Pinot Gris vines and their newly formed buds from frost.

We also took the opportunity to celebrate the end of the pruning season with a competition, followed by a picnic among the vines. Our contract pruners are now returning to their native Vanuatu after doing a splendid job with Ara. We’ll see the fruit of their labours at harvest time and look forward to seeing them return next winter.

August 2011: First Ara Pinot Gris

We’ve just finished bottling our first ever Pinot Gris, which will become available in New Zealand and Australia in the coming months under the Single Estate label.

Though it was only the first crop from our small block of Pinot Gris, the grapes attained exceptional fruit concentration. The vines were, of course, helped by the fact that with the close planting we have on our single estate, each plant only had to ripen and develop a small fruit load.

The resulting wine has a delightful trace of honey character complementing the typical pear and stone fruit flavours of Marlborough Pinot Gris. Click here to go to the product page & full tasting note.

Meanwhile, in the vineyard we’re finishing the pruning for next year’s vintage, in temperatures that have dropped as low as -6ºC in the morning. Around the middle of August, as the photos show, we’ve even had snow – something that hasn’t been seen down at vineyard level in Marlborough for 25 years!

July 2011: No shortcuts with pruning

It’s just past the middle of winter and we’re just over halfway with our pruning for this year.

It can get pretty cold where we are, elevated in the corner of the Wairau Plains furthest from the sea. Most mornings when work starts, we have temperatures close to freezing, so it’s pretty tough on the guys who cut and tie our vines.

It’s this hard work that lays the foundation for our 2012 harvest and helps to ensure the vines on our vineyard will have a long, productive life. The best canes to use are ones from last year, growing off a spur from the year before. So we have to be careful about what we select to cut and what we keep.

 At Ara, we only lay down two canes per vine. This is because we purposely harvest less fruit from each vine so that the ripening and flavour development would be more concentrated.

All our wine comes from this single vineyard, so what we do now lays the foundation of every 2012 Ara wine you’ll be enjoying next year and after. And we have to get all the pruning done before bud-burst in mid-September. So, despite the nip in the air, there’s a good, happy buzz about the place.