| Wednesday, 15 February 2012 | A Second Chance |
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Just because it’s harvest time doesn’t mean all other aspects of our business are halted. In order to make way for the 2012 Cabernet vintage, the 2010 vintage needs to be bottled. Barrels have been selected and emptied to tank where the wine is checked. Here’s my final opportunity to adjust and tweak the wine before the final step, bottling. Once the wine is safe in its bottle, my opportunity to influence or steer the process is complete. Rather like sending your child out into the world. I pondered this point recently when one of our loyal customers sent me an email saying she had recently had a few ‘bad’ bottles of Sauvignon Blanc. Luckily she still had a bottle from the offending batch and I picked it up to investigate what the problem could be. The wine was definitely ‘flat’ and lacked fruit, leaving the wine rather sharp. As the seal had not been broken and I bottle each vintage in one batch, my chief suspicion was that these boxes must have been treated badly after leaving the farm. I’m not one to get overly pedantic about wine, but it is important to remember that it is a living product, and extreme heat and temperature fluctuations can adversely affect it. I was just grateful these particular bottles were bought by someone who knew the wine well, and realised there was a problem. It would have been far sadder if they were bought by a first time buyer who would probably never buy this particular wine again.
The lessons here for you are twofold:
Sean Skibbe is a winemaker at South Hill Vineyards in the Elgin
Valley. Follow him over the next few weeks as he shares his view on how
his 7th vintage is panning out. |
The cooler weather has been very welcome, temperatures in the mid to low 20s are just perfect, allowing the vines to concentrate on ripening their crop gradually—with plenty of time to allow flavours to develop before the sugars are ripe enough to allow for moderate alcohols.