Venturing to the Edge
Martinborough is a town of around 700 permanent residents, many of whom are cockies living out in the wop wops on some sort of farm. Town itself is centered around a grassy square which is circled by a few cafes and shops. Legend has it that Mr. Martin had many daughters and travelled the world looking for suitable sons in-law to marry them off to. The Martinborough streets, a tribute to his fatherly dedication, are named for the places he visited. I live on Dublin Street, The brewery is on New York and the hostel is on Cologne (one up from Strasbourge). I've never been to Sackville, but there is a street duly named. Always a patriot, Martin aligned these avanues like a Union Jack. Nowadays, Martinborough is a weekend destination for Wellingtonians, many of whom own a second home here. The town swells with swells on Friday evening and deflates again sometime Sunday afternoon. Other than that, there are about thirty-odd wineries and lots of grapes.
I alit from the train at 9:30 in the morning. By 11'o'clock I was working at my new job. That's what Larry McKenna, winemaker and owner of Escarpment Vineyard would call "getting right into it." Getting into it on my first day meant picking Pinot noir at a vineyard we manage a few blocks off of the square. I met 'the girls' - Escarpment's fulltime vineyard crew, 'the boys' - Noel the tractor driver and Chris the everything else driver (a couple of hard and capable blokes) and Guy McMaster, Escarpment's production manager and Larry's right hand. By the end of the week I felt I'd known them for months, and by now they feel like I've been here forever (and are ready for me to be gone).
Larry McKenna is a highly respected leader of the NZ winemaking community. He shows up on numerous tasting panels, consults for wineries and vineyards throughout this country and Australia and has been making his own damn fine wine here in M'boro for over twenty years. They call him 'The Prince of Pinot'. He's a crew-cut Teva-and-shorts wall of a man with a great sense of humor, youthful enthusiasm, aged wisdom and heaps of humility. I enjoy working for him. Escarpment is his new project. The vineyards were planted starting in 1999 and the first vintage was 2003. It's sited out Te Muna Road about 5k from town, 50 acres planted on gravely river terrace overlooking the Huramunga River bed. The vineyard is planted with a variety of Pinot noir clones - including a close-planted block of self-rooted Abel (a DRC 'gumboot' clone named after the customs agent that confiscated it) - Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Pinot Blanc and Riesling. This young vineyard has already produced a single vineyard wine named Kupe (the pre-Maori navigator) which has just been released to great acclaim.
The winemaking process is simple. We pick the fruit - can't make wine without grapes - and tip it onto a shaker table for sorting. After picking out any green or moldy fruit, the grapes are lifted up with a conveyor and dumped into a destemmer. The berries are then dumped into a open-top fermenter where they will live for the next couple of weeks. Escarpment has a number of different tanks and fermenters, foremost among them two french oak cuves (like huge barrels open on one end) that allow up to 8 tonne of fruit to ferment in the Burgundian style. After five to seven days,the must begins to ferment naturally or is innoculated with special yeasts. We take their vitals - sugar and temp - in the mornings, and plunge thrice daily to keep the cap wet and the yeasties happy. Once the juice is wine and the cap has sunk, we pump off what we can into a tank and dig out the rest (just like it sounds).
This is pressed gently for 2.5 hours with a few basic enzymes added to help the solids settle out. The next day we fill up the barrels with the young wine. It will go through a second malolactic ferment in the Spring and will be ready to bottle before the next harvest. Voila!
Except, it's never that bloody easy, is it? First off, there was a lot of rain when the vines were flowering which led to a severe loss of fruit potential. Then, in late March, just a few weeks off from picking, there were massive rains in the Wairapara (M'boro). Over 200 mm's in two days. Rivers rose, roads were washed out, and ripening berries burst from over-saturation, sugars were diluted, and molds set in. We picked some fruit that was coated in river mud from the floods. No one in Martinborough escaped this event, and every winery was down around 50% from last year's yields. Escarpment is a young and developing winery, designed to top out at 100 tonnes of fruit and expecting just 70 tonnes this year. We did just under 40. The berries were small and the flavors developed and we expect great things from the fruit we brought in. 2005 will be a vintage in great demand from Martinborough, both because the wines will be rare and of the highest quality.
I alit from the train at 9:30 in the morning. By 11'o'clock I was working at my new job. That's what Larry McKenna, winemaker and owner of Escarpment Vineyard would call "getting right into it." Getting into it on my first day meant picking Pinot noir at a vineyard we manage a few blocks off of the square. I met 'the girls' - Escarpment's fulltime vineyard crew, 'the boys' - Noel the tractor driver and Chris the everything else driver (a couple of hard and capable blokes) and Guy McMaster, Escarpment's production manager and Larry's right hand. By the end of the week I felt I'd known them for months, and by now they feel like I've been here forever (and are ready for me to be gone).
Larry McKenna is a highly respected leader of the NZ winemaking community. He shows up on numerous tasting panels, consults for wineries and vineyards throughout this country and Australia and has been making his own damn fine wine here in M'boro for over twenty years. They call him 'The Prince of Pinot'. He's a crew-cut Teva-and-shorts wall of a man with a great sense of humor, youthful enthusiasm, aged wisdom and heaps of humility. I enjoy working for him. Escarpment is his new project. The vineyards were planted starting in 1999 and the first vintage was 2003. It's sited out Te Muna Road about 5k from town, 50 acres planted on gravely river terrace overlooking the Huramunga River bed. The vineyard is planted with a variety of Pinot noir clones - including a close-planted block of self-rooted Abel (a DRC 'gumboot' clone named after the customs agent that confiscated it) - Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Pinot Blanc and Riesling. This young vineyard has already produced a single vineyard wine named Kupe (the pre-Maori navigator) which has just been released to great acclaim.
The winemaking process is simple. We pick the fruit - can't make wine without grapes - and tip it onto a shaker table for sorting. After picking out any green or moldy fruit, the grapes are lifted up with a conveyor and dumped into a destemmer. The berries are then dumped into a open-top fermenter where they will live for the next couple of weeks. Escarpment has a number of different tanks and fermenters, foremost among them two french oak cuves (like huge barrels open on one end) that allow up to 8 tonne of fruit to ferment in the Burgundian style. After five to seven days,the must begins to ferment naturally or is innoculated with special yeasts. We take their vitals - sugar and temp - in the mornings, and plunge thrice daily to keep the cap wet and the yeasties happy. Once the juice is wine and the cap has sunk, we pump off what we can into a tank and dig out the rest (just like it sounds).
This is pressed gently for 2.5 hours with a few basic enzymes added to help the solids settle out. The next day we fill up the barrels with the young wine. It will go through a second malolactic ferment in the Spring and will be ready to bottle before the next harvest. Voila!
Except, it's never that bloody easy, is it? First off, there was a lot of rain when the vines were flowering which led to a severe loss of fruit potential. Then, in late March, just a few weeks off from picking, there were massive rains in the Wairapara (M'boro). Over 200 mm's in two days. Rivers rose, roads were washed out, and ripening berries burst from over-saturation, sugars were diluted, and molds set in. We picked some fruit that was coated in river mud from the floods. No one in Martinborough escaped this event, and every winery was down around 50% from last year's yields. Escarpment is a young and developing winery, designed to top out at 100 tonnes of fruit and expecting just 70 tonnes this year. We did just under 40. The berries were small and the flavors developed and we expect great things from the fruit we brought in. 2005 will be a vintage in great demand from Martinborough, both because the wines will be rare and of the highest quality.
posted by Sur Lie at 12:00 AM
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