‘Full on’

One of the reasons we went with the name ‘Fiasco Wines’ is that we wanted something that reflected the action and vibrancy of making wine in Marlborough.  A ‘place name’ label  just seemed too sedentary to do justice to the reality. 

Before gaining first hand knowledge of the industry here, when thinking of winemaking I’d get pictures in my head of  little vineyards on hillsides, people carrying grapes in baskets and a wrinkled old man fluffing around over old barrels doing tastings.  I guess this was based on what I’d heard of Old World winemaking and it all seemed pretty slow paced and somewhat romantic.  But the reality couldn’t be more different.  There is state of the art technology; a myriad of different types of people working in the industry and the year just flies by with all that needs doing.  Harvesting the grapes is all action, with harvesters and wineries operating 24 hours a day throughout March, April and May.  Then there are a massive number of hectares needing pruning and hundreds of workers brought in from overseas to cope with the workload – so June to August is all go.  Then the new spring buds burst in September and frost fighting starts - with frost a very real risk until November.   There is some amazing technology involved in this and those on the job are often up half the night checking data and making the tough decisions on what action to take – helicopters and wind fans are not cheap and their noise causes a stir with the locals.  This time of year is also time to bottle and label the 2009 wines.  Ours are being bottled later this month.  The end of the year is busy for sales – with all the social events that come with Christmas, summer and general celebrations.  So I suggested to Aaron that early 2010 we should have a chance to have a breather and a Fiasco Wines party in the old woolshed on the vineyard.  “Sure,” said Aaron but don’t forget we’ll only be 8 weeks or so from harvest then!

The naked winemaker…

I guess a girl can’t complain about having male strippers in her backyard all week…

Yes we are slowly winning the pruning battle.  We’ve made all the cuts and this week have done the stripping (so called as it involves stripping out all the old canes).  Now its onto the final stage –  tying down.  We need to make sure it’s all done before spring bud burst and have to say its been tempting to just pay a gang of workers to come in and complete it in one hit.   But we will get there slowly but surely doing it ourselves.  It has been challenging this year as I am couch bound feeding our little bub Archie and Aaron is often dragged (kicking and screaming   ) from the vineyard to fulfill other winemaking and marketing duties.   We are lucky to have the help of Aaron’s Dad, Noel and one of his mates Geoff Beavis – guys who are willing to use their spare time to give us a hand and who don’t mind being paid in wine!  You guys are legends! 

I asked Aaron to give us a pic for the blog to show readers what stripping involved…WARNING – R18, CONTAINS HORROR – …

Stripping in the vineyard '09'

What can I say – just as well we have the baby…frost bite and secateurs can do dangerous things to a bloke! 

I’m getting more than a bit worried that hubby has been spending too much time alone in the vines…anyone know a good shrink?

New or old wineskins?

 

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, “The old is good.” ’NRSV

Since biblical times, humankind has found change challenging.  The above verse from Luke is generally interpreted as a metaphor for Christianity itself – a new message that wont fit with the old.  But the question of how to integrate the new with the old spans across multiple areas…

One of the challenges with wine is finding the balance between old and new ways of doing things – there is a real tension between:

Tradition and innovation - there is something appealing about the cork but hey screw caps save having to throw out musty, corked wine and are so much easier to put back on the bottle in the fridge!

 Romance and practicality – hand picking and feet stomping of grapes in the late autumn sun is all very well but a machine can harvest much more efficiently.

‘Natural’ versus technological – we could treat the wine with less additives, but  are we OK with murky,unfiltered wine?

Our ideals and what we actually do - why not hand weed between the rows instead of using big vehicles that pump out greenhouse gases…but ohh the labour   :-(

It’s not a matter of throwing out all the old ways of doing things and replacing them with newer, superior methods, but rather finding the right place along the continuum.   It is not easy deciding what is worth retaining and what needs replacing.  At Fiasco for example we love to embrace new technologies, including using the internet for our marketing.  At the same time however, we are experimenting with wines that are made in a way done a long time ago – more naturally with wild yeasts and less additives/processing. 

I suspect that in recent times, in areas not limited to winemaking, there has been a movement back to basics, back a little on the continuum.  People seem to be saying: “Hey, wait a minute, back up the bus – lets take a look at the old way, there may be some value in that.”  I guess the recession has played a part in this move.   Tough times forced us to do things the way grandma did and interestingly a recent survey found that many of us actually found these changes to be a positive thing (sorry I can’t source that survey, heard it mentioned on the tele a couple of days ago). 

  I was aware of it when I had my son Archie, 7 weeks ago at Wairau hospital here in Blenheim.  The protocol had changed since I had Finn, over seven years ago.  Immediately after the birth, Archie was placed on me for skin to skin contact for an uninterrupted hour.  No whisking the baby away for weighing or cleaning up.  In fact bathing the baby didn’t happen until a couple of days later.  The idea is that this will help with mother child bonding and with the early establishment of breast feeding.   Demand feeding is also encouraged, again a move back to how things were done a long time ago when instinct was more highly valued.

But its not as simple as just going back to the old way of doing things.  Rather we need to take the time to evaluate everything we do at Fiasco to determine the very best way of making and selling our product.  Sometimes change can be fantastic.  Many of you have probably seen the clip below, but it does make the point that tradition for tradition’s sake can be just as stifling as innovation for innovation’s sake

P.S  By the way, over on facebook we are giving away free wine this Saturday – check out our fan page and be in to win.

pruning: sugar not soccer you idiot!

Just for a minute forget about the winemaker swanning around the winery, sipping on nice wines, or collecting medals for the wines ‘they’ made.  Also, forget about the viticulturist perched up in  the air conditioned office, or driving around the block in the nice warm ute.

It all starts in the vineyard and for the bulk of the bigger wineries in New Zealand and especially MARLBOROUGH, these are the real medal winners.  It’s hard graft out there, and without them, well, we’d be in trouble!!

Down in the dirt with a try hard aaron attenborough

Just thought I’d show you all the quality of the soils in our little Fiasco vineyard.  Our little inspection shows there is a great level of organic matter down there,  rich in invertebrate life, and tasty too.  The soil IS ALIVE!!!

The soil is hugely important for grapevines and the resulting wine.  Vines need/depend on the soil for nourishment as they complete their reproductive-yearly cycle.  Soil quality and composition has the abilty to greatly influence the sensory properties of wine and most imporantly, how the vines ultimately grow. 

Pruners wanted!

Is anyone willing to come and prune for us cause we’ve got a few issues with the current pruning team…..

We are equal opportunity – offer a fantastic work environment, and the boss is a positive hands on guy!!

All fruit in – Yay!

         

Well I don’t know how but I’ve managed to add a couple of photos to this post and simultaneously lose all the text!  What can I say – the synopis is that it’s autumn, all the grapes are in and the vineyard colours are gorgeous .

Time warp

This week seems to be flying by and we have to keep checking what day it is!

Aaron and I continue to be ’ships in the night’  – passing each other in the doorway as he heads to work or bed.   The week began with the online Twitter launch of our Black Pearl Pinot Noir.   It was well received and the experience enjoyed by all  those who took part -  we are certainly keen to do more twitter tastings in the future.  Thanks to a great post from our twitter friend, Bron, an excellent sum up can be viewed here.  

Tuesday was another big day as our fruit was harvested.  Fortunately we had perfect weather conditions leading up to harvest day and the quality was pleasing and promising for the wine to come.     Aaron is still working 14 hour night shifts every night and both the Black Pearl launch and the harvest have seen him awake during many of his precious daytime sleep hours.   I tried to enthuse him with the news that the end is in sight and post vintage parties are currently being planned…he responded that his only wish right now would be to have a catheter inserted and be left to sleep for a week!  However, he tells me that the volume of grapes coming into the winery has reduced a lot in the last few days, with the last vineyards now being harvested.  However, they will be back-logged with the processing of it all (particularly filtering)  for a little while yet.    

Yesterday I saw some excess grapes being harvested onto the ground - it cannot be left on the vines to rot due to disease risks – and so there is yet another cost and a painful zilch return.  I also know of excess fruit being sold for as little as $500 a tonne to simply cover the costs of growing it (compare this to last year’s $1500 - $2300 per tonne!).  When I say ‘excess’ I refer to fruit that the wineries were just not willing to take on this year due to the problems of oversupply that happened last year.  2009 vintage will certainly be remembered as unique in terms of all the fiascos of the oversupply - but hopefully one where the pain was shared by all for the good of all and ultimately our niche wine market preserved.

Speaking of grapes on the vine, my Dad has offered us some of his excess Gewurztraminer.  It has been ripe for a few days now and Aaron reckons that if left just a little longer, it will have the makings of a great little limited release dessert wine.  If anyone is keen to come to Marlborough in the near future for a few hours grape picking – let us know (we’ll confirm the date asap).  There will of course be free wine and food on the day and a very generous discount on the eventual end product!

Life outside the wine world:  The kids and I took a short break to Christchurch late last week and returned Monday night.  As it is school holidays, it seemed an easier battle than the ongoing failed attempts to keep them quiet while Dad slept.  We stopped in Kaikoura a night to catch up with good friends and were spoilt by an unexpected visit from the endangered Hutton’s shearwater.  My friend Jodie works as the Biodiversity Officer for the Kaikoura Council and had a late night phone call from someone who had found one of these rare little beauties on the roadside.  It was a great privilege not just to see one but to actually hold it and release it the next morning.  The sight of it flying back out to sea for a second chance was nothing short of awesome.   

Finn gets up close with the precious Hutton

Hutton's Away!

We had a lot of fun in the Garden City at QEII, at Science Alive, malls, movies and spending time with old and new friends.  The kids are still getting over the sight of me at QEII  in hired togs rolling around like a whale in the pool – the midwife said swimming may help my breech bubs turn head down!  And you’ll be pleased to know that at my check up on Tuesday the baby is now head down (whether it’ll stay that way for the next 9 weeks is anyone’s guess).  Only now my iron levels are low so both Aaron and I are getting about in a state of fatigue.  I’m scoffing iron tablets and embarrassing the kids even further by gnawing on red meat and moaning about constipation every chance I get!

24/7

They tell me about two thirds of the region’s grapes are now harvested.   There is light at the end of the tunnel for all those involved – by the end of the month some workers will see daylight and their families for the first time in weeks!  And the now familiar sound of harvesters rolling by in the middle of the night will soon be forgotten.

2 am and there’s fruit coming in all across Marlborough…

Dad checks on some fruit – not bad leg muscles for an old bugger

 

It seems that last year the fiascos with fruit volumes were all had in the winery, but this year the problem has been largely shifted to the growers.  The wine companies have given the growers strict maximum tonnages per hectare and anything over is the grower’s problem.  It’s a problem because the grower is  either fined for not stripping enough fruit out beforehand (not an exact science by any means!) and/or the grower is left having to try and find another buyer for the excess fruit at the last minute.  There have been plenty of adverts in the local paper as last minute efforts are made to sell excess fruit.   We have been rung by grape growing friends with offers of free grapes for Fiasco and it was great of them to think of us – but we’ve had so say no for two reasons – firstly,  we don’t have the tank space booked to make it into wine and secondly, we don’t have large enough markets to risk the costs of making it into wine.  It seems a terrible waste for grapes to be left on the vines in many places, and to have been stripped out onto the ground elsewhere – but hopefully it will be a lesson learned and endless expansion will pause and wait for demand to catch up with supply again.

How well do you know your grapes?

A bit of a fun challenge for you – who will be first to correctly identity the grape varieties pictured in the shots below?  Don’t be scared, have a crack!   There are six varieties – I’ll list them in jumbled order  if no-one can crack it first!

These shots were taken this morning on my walk with the dog.  All of the fruit is not ours, but is all within a couple of killometres of our place. I have to say I love this time of year when you can have a good munch on the fruit and it’s amazing how easy it is to recognise the same flavours in the end bottle of wine.  It is not uncommon for people to ask what else  is used to flavour wine – there are no flavour additives – it’s all straight from the vine! 

UPDATE:   The six varieties, in no particular order, are: Gewurztraminer, Sav Blanc, Reisling, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and some Californian table grapes as a wild card!  Now you have to have a go!

 

And for those that moan about the monoculture of grapes ruining the scenery in these parts, well you can’t complain about these vistas when out on a morning walk, surely!

Apples!