What do you do for the rest of the year….?
If there is a question that we get repeatedly asked, it’s the one in the heading above.
It’s easy to think from arm’s length, kicked-back enjoying your favourite red or white tipple,
that after harvest or vintage we all take a deep breath and put our feet up congratulating
ourselves on a job well done…..
….and why wouldn’t you think that, with social media and news reports covering the start,
middle and finish of harvest in full technicolour video and photos. It is without a doubt the
most hectic time of the year, dependent on prayers to the weather gods, testing, hour-by-
hour decision making, compromise, more testing, weighing, shovelling, tipping, recording,
crushing, pressing, pumping… in fact, all the “-ings” apart from the ones that follow “relax”
or “sleep”.
So, I’m here to explain what happens AFTER that period that can (and does) stretch from
early January to May.
Now, think of winemaking not only as a process that involves harvesting grapes and
converting their juice into wine by fermentation carried out by yeast….. and picture a
comet! The head of the comet, apart from scaring impressionable sauropods, is
representative of the concentrated burst of time and energy expended in carrying out the
initial processes described above. The tail of the comet is then representative of the spread
of multiple tasks and time it then takes to meld or nurture that wine to its destination of a
packaged and dressed bottle and ultimately making its way to your glass.
So what’s involved?
Once the young wine is produced, we must make sure that the inherent quality that we
have worked so hard for to achieve, is maintained. This means that we must keep it
separate from any process (biological or biochemical) that would undo all the good work. A
lot of this involves keeping the wine off “ullage” or not having a full storage vessel of the
wine. It’s a problem for boutique and larger wineries alike, and you have to think like a
grandmaster chess player to eventually match volumes of wine with tank size so that the
desired outcome is that the wine is not exposed to gross amounts of air that can send a
wine….errr… off. This can mean necessary transfers from vessel to vessel, as you rack, filter
or clean a tank, and combine parcels of wine to fill the empty tank. This is fairly complicated
because you have a winery of stainless tanks and oak barrels full of newly made wine (and
quite possibly last year’s wine as well), with only a handful of empty vessels to play with.
AAAARRRGHH! It’s no wonder we can’t sleep at night! We don’t count sheep, we dream of
literages a ’la Queens Gambit.
Of course, you eventually figure it out, but it’s not a job you can do in a couple of days. It
can take weeks (or months) of setting up pumps, cleaning and preparing tanks with inert gas
cover to exclude oxygen, carefully transferring the wine, then do it again, and again, ad
nauseum, until you feel like you’re caught in a liquid version of Tetris. After lab analysis, the
What do you do for the rest of the year….ctd ?
wine is then put securely to bed, newly filtered or perhaps sitting on lees until it is called for
bottling preparation. We have been in the fortunate position of having our wine sell out
quickly, which means some our fresher styles are bottled quickly after fermentation, which
involves “stabilising” the wine so that it doesn’t throw a deposit or haze. This firstly involves
tasting and blending the wine(s) by measuring trial 100 mL aliquots of these, deciding which
is the blend that will best satisfy our customers, then transcribing the percentages used to
the volume size of the blend…. (100mLs makes the blending maths easier). We then tank-
assemble the blend and, in the case of white wines, chill them down to -4 deg C (which is
the temperature most home fridges are set at) so that the wine doesn’t throw tartrate in
the bottle in the refrigerator door shelf but in the tank. During this time, the wine
undergoes basic wine analyses; bottles, caps and boxes are ordered, and the wine is then
filtered and sent off to our preferred bottling line, a period that takes about 8 weeks from
go to woah! You also have to book time on the bottling line, sometimes months in advance,
sort out the labels so that all the legal and mandatory info is correct, check for typo’s…..(I
once mistakenly referred to myself as a “Winermaker” on a back label, and you’d be
surprised how many times a grape variety has been misspelt !) ….but I digress.
These sticky bits of paper are incredibly important in representing your brand to the
possible purchasers of your wine, and they must be correct and delivered on-time to the
bottling line along with all the other consumables. Did I mention we have to order our
barrels now to get them here in time for vintage? A gamble taken hoping we have wine
good enough to fill them with.
So, we are generally now into August. In the vineyard, pruning of the vines has taken place,
as well as slashing and mowing to keep it all looking neat and tidy. Broken posts or stakes
are being replaced, as well as any snapped trellis wire….but what’s that green tinge
happening in the white grape blocks? It’s budburst, reminding us that it’s all going to start
again in 16 weeks’ time.
We’d better have that production meeting and see what we require in terms of fruit for the
coming year. After consensus is reached and the crystal ball consulted, it’s time to contact
our growers and work out how much we can expect or want in terms of tonnages of grapes
and what they can provide. Back in the winery, the rush is on to clear the tanks and start
bottling in earnest. A time that strikes fear into the company’s accountancy team. The
bottling pressure slowly builds, as red wines from last year are transferred from their secure
barrel reverie and blended (or not) into the tanks you hope you have cleared so that you
have room to prepare the wines for bottling. It’s a race against time to clear the decks, a
time of slowly hurrying… Barrels are washed and steamed out and younger wine is
transferred back into them, hoping that maturation will provide us with the desired result.
More testing, tasting (and strong, black coffee), more just -in-time logistics, and getting the
wine to bottle and….Phew! That takes care of the spring months.
December, sweet December, when maintenance is foremost in our minds. Making sure
everything works and, if it doesn’t, get it fixed. Are we taking a holiday? Maybe a week or
What do you do for the rest of the year….ctd ?
two to clear the head and watch the southerly busters or La Nina set the vineyard awash
just weeks out from harvest.
