Masterchef...

Cooking class...take one Pinot Gris wine sample, sterile filter and poach at 80C for 6 hours...if the wine looks no different from when you started then its Protein stable, if it goes hazy or cloudy in the slightest then its unstable and time for another dose of Bentonite (a clay no less). All part of the service in bringing you this premium product. All great chefs use wine!

Spring is in the air....

All was quiet at the Georges Road Vineyard on the day before the first day of Spring. A beautiful day and not condusive to hard work at all! Luckily the vineyard is all up to date and ready to go...

Riesling Block Three 2010...

Another great review for our 2010 Block Three Riesling. Read it here in this weeks NZ Herald

And once youve done that, Order some for yourself - go to the website and get 15% off the price AND free delivery nationwide. Now thats great value.

Pinot Gris 2011

Hand harvested, whole bunch pressed straight to barrel, wild ferment and left on full lees until just NOW. Ive just racked the wine out to tank in preparation for next months bottling of our 2011 Pinot Gris. Aromatic and textured with great mouth feel and about 8g/L residial sugar. Should be released just prior to Christmas.

The dirt on Georges Road...

Heres a look at the soil structure from the area in Waipara where we have our Syrah, Riesling and Pinot Gris vineyard. These soils are called Canterbury Gravels and are the predominant soil type along the western part of the Waipara Valley. Deposited during the Pleistocene period and more recently during the last major glacial advance. Quite a while ago in other words. Looking at the photo above you can understand why most vineyards in the area are very free draining - lots of stones and gravel with minor water holding capacity. The majority of the upper soils are Loess with plenty of deposited river gravel, silt and sand. Underlying this are layers of greywacke and argillite. Geological observation of the Waipara Valley began in 1855 although the major fieldwork from which most information is now derived was carried out in the 1950's.

New Release - SYRAH 2010

Coming soon to a dinner table near you, the new release Gorges Road 2010 Syrah Block One. Handharvested superb fruit, destemmed without crushing to small opent top fermentation vats, 3 day ambient soak, natural fermentation, hand punch downs, 40 day extended cuvaison, pressed to a mixture of 2 and 3 year old French oak for a period of 12 months, natural malolactic fermentation, no racking of wine until final blending, polish filtration and bottling. 

A wonderfully elegant wine, perfumed with dark berry fruits and licorice showing through, fine grained tannins and hints of spice and oak. A great example of why Waipara is an exciting place for Syrah. A cool climate wine at its best, aromatic and lean with great elegance. Like all great terroirs, the best fruit struggles but shines at harvest. Picked in mid May, a full month after most Pinot Noirs, the grapes are concentrated and delicate but show a wonderful aromatic quality. This is a wine (and region) to watch as we learn more and more about whats best each vintage.

Vineyard walking tour...

Looking a bit barren in the vineyard at this time of year. All the vines are pruned and the vineyard floor is a combination of dead weeds and mulched canes. The next job and possibly the last major one before budburst around mid September, is to drop all the canopy wires to the ground. This makes it easier to train the new growing shoots of the vines by lifting one wire up at a time and also so that those new tips of the vines dont get cut off in a high wind which would then affect the growth and development of the whole vine. This wire job is areal workout as each post has 6 wires clipped to it and I will have to walk up every second row, dealing to both rows at a time. So doing the quick maths - 120 rows of approx 150m each - about 18 kms !