Another busy week! After arriving back into Blenheim from Hawkes Bay we were treated to a lovely afternoon tea with Jane and Simon, and a quick debrief of the last week as we had all been away.
Afternoon tea at Astrolabe Farm
The 2009 Durvillea Pinot Grigio was bottled on Monday, after worrying that the labels weren’t going to make it in time, we managed to get them flown down from Auckland for the 7.30am bottling! Lucky for me it’s the winemaker’s job to taste the wine off, so Tim was down there bright and early making sure it was all going to plan.
With the new vintage we have changed the labels so we can distinguish between the different varieties, the most common complaint from the 2008 vintage was that people couldn’t tell the varieties apart. So watch this space for the new labels, and the back label – my favourite part.
The rest of the week has felt rather rushed as it is another short week, I met up with Jules (@winewanker) on Tuesday at the Liquorland Top 100 competition where he has been stewarding, it was great to finally meet him after all the tweeting! We didn’t enter Durvillea into that competition, but I have been busy entering a few others, such as the Sydney International Wine Competition, and a few other national ones. So we are looking forward to the results.
In the vineyards all is going well, Jeremy the viticulturist has been looking after the growers, and organising all of the pruning, most of our growers are almost all done now. This vintage in particular the pruning and vineyard management is going to be one of the most important ways to control the size of the crop, to make sure we don’t over produce. This was one of the most important messages that seemed to come out of Bragato, Marlborough in particular needs to make sure we don’t over crop and repeat the mistake of 2008; producing too much wine with out route to market .
Anyway better go, have just got home to Christchurch for the night, as I am off to Queenstown for the next four days on holiday, hopefully the weather will let us get some skiing in,
