Vilafonte Sorting Blog 2006, Friday February 10th Day 6

CLICK HERE FOR TODAYS PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH BARTHOLOMEW BROADBENT AND TALES OF HIS FIRST GRAPE SORTING EXPERIENCE
A word on grape sorting before crushing…I love it. I first did it here in South Africa, 5 years ago. It changes the traditional idea of destem-crush. Here it is destem-sort-crush; or sort-destem-sort-crush (for more variable grapes); or, depending on your winemaking plan…destem-sort-no crush!We do pick our grapes clean in the vineyard, and they look good when coming in the bins. But once the grapes are shaken off the stems, it reveals: some little raisins hiding at the bottom of the cluster; a few green berries; some leaves that sneaked through the destemmer; a few particles of stems that broke off; some grapes that did not come off the stem cleanly. If you looked at, or weighed, what we sort out, it would not seem like much. But all of it is what we do NOT want in our fermenter. To me, we are "improving the grapes" , and I know the wine will have greater purity of fruit expression, for having done this.I also love something less tangible about the sort; those grapes rolling off the belt into their fermenter are like paint to the artist. I can see & feel their size, their color, their strengths and weaknesses; they become much more personal; I have a much better feel for this vineyard, by spending time sorting them. (Just to be clear it takes 8 sorters minimum plus someone overseeing the feeding of the grapes and removal of stems, not just me).The photo is Bartholomew Broadbent, our U.S. importer visiting South Africa for the first time; our most excellent sorters; and me; at the sorting belt. Zelma Long, Vilafonte winemaker

Vilafonte 2006, First day of Harvest, Thursday Day 5

CLICK HERE FOR TODAYS PODCAST
At last, the vineyard has released its first grapes, block AB, Merlot, ready to pick. We are all over it…the pickers…Phil watching over…Julie sampling for phenolics analysis; Zelma and Bernard waiting anxiously at the destemmer and sorting line. 5.7 tons. One tank, and 6 hours of sorting. I am very happy.
Picking decisions are always nerve wracking…should I wait a day…or two…or did I wait too long. But watching the grapes roll over the sorting belt, they look good; like little black peas, very clean, occasional raisins, very tasty. Our analysis looks good too; acids are soft; sugars are on target; and color, from the phenolic analysis is very solid. The clusters do seem a bit less physiologically ripe than last year; stems end are purple but rest of the cluster architecture is green. The grapes skins are soft, but not thin.
All in all, it is a good start, and I am happy!!
Zelma Long

Vilafonte 2006 Harvest Action Blog - Day 4 Feb 8th

We care about evenness of ripeness in each of our blocks. Think of it this way; you can take a grape at 18 Brix (sour and green) and at 30 Brix (overripe), crush them together and measure the Brix (% sugar), and you will get an average of 24. On the other hand, you could crush 2 grapes together, both reading 24 Brix. At this sugar level grapes are usually close to being nicely ripe. The “average Brix” of each example would be 24. But you can imagine how different they would taste….
Listen to our PODCAST explanation of this graph.

When our grapes are ready to pick, we want them as evenly ripe as possible. And Phil plans quite a bit of work in the vineyard over the year to get that evenness. So how do we know how successful we are?? Before harvest Julie will take a vineyard sample of 500 individual grapes and check the Brix of each. She inputs the data and gets statistics on the grapes. That is our
quantifiable data and feedback to the vineyard. Here is a picture of Block AB, which we will harvest tomorrow…very even in its ripeness. Tomorrow we will tell you how it looks when we are sorting it after harvest.

We have an exciting development ... Click on the link at the right for all of you that would like to subscribe to our PODCAST.
Zelma Long

Vilafonté 2006 Action Blog - Day 3

From the Cape of South Africa

"Hurry up and wait"; this seems to be our harvest mantra. We haven't actually started bringing in our grapes yet. We have been hovering over them: thinning; evaluating maturity, phenolics; water status; and evenness of ripeness since mid January. Watching and waiting.

Yesterday I introduced the crew who grow the Vilafonte wine from grapes to bottle. Today I will introduce the vineyard.

Our vineyard site, that we care for, care about, and are watching in this blog, is in the Paarl appellation; downslope from the Simonsberg Mountain, on a bench, before the valley slouches down across the Berg river and becomes the Paarl Valley.

It has a desirable configuration: a bowl, but a shallow one, and 3 sided, with the 4th side the drainage. What we like here is (1) the slope, which drains water and air; (2) the different aspects; so we can plant blocks that will face north, south, and West - to give diversity; (3) and that the "bowl" has its back to the "Sou-Easter"; a fierce wind that pushes fog over the Hottentots Holland and blows down the Valley. So we get wind, but more breezy and less fierce that it could be elsewhere.

We have planted our 30 acres in 1 hectare blocks (approximate); there are 4 Merlot blocks; 2 Malbec; 1 Cabernet Franc; and 7 Cab blocks. We have unimaginatively named our blocks by letter (A,B,C, etc).

Today Phil, Bernard and I walked Block Z (Merlot); AB (Merlot); E (Merlot) and D Cabernet; the latter because it is usually the first Cab to ripen and we wanted to check its status (not ripe).
The essence of our time was: (1) Are Z and AB ready to pick?? (answer…no); (2) Since the upper part of Z and the lower part ripen at slightly different times, should we pick them separately or together?? (answer is: still thinking about this; there are pros and cons on each side)…and Julie is sampling them separately and together today and tomorrow. We will look at her information and I will walk the vineyard again on Thursday. And finally, (3) is E ready to pick??? E is a different clone and more difficult to time harvest and make it very well. It seems to do better being picked very ripe. And it is definitely not ready to pick now; skins are tough; tannins still a bit dry. So it is hurry up and wait.

Have a look at our experimental harvest PODCAST!
Zelma Long

Vilafonte 2006 Harvest Blog - Day 2

Vilafonte 2006 Harvest: Day 2 Saturday Feb. 4
Yesterday I mentioned the “cast of characters” needed to grow Vilafonte wine.
Here they are:
In the Vineyard:

Dr. Phil (Freese) - Vilafonte Vineyard designer. Plans & directs winegrowing. Sensitively moves grapes to harvest readiness.
Ronald Spies – Vilafonte Vineyard manager. he’s where the “rubber meets the road”. He gets the right things done at the right time.
Fossie and crew – They remove the grapes from the vine into small lugs, carefully. And in winter (July & August), will prune and tie the vines.
Ronald’s father Johan Spies - Essential harvest helper. He drives the harvested grapes to the winery.
Julie Lohwasser – EHH. chief sampler, data collection vineyard & winery. Julie does ripeness sampling; vineyard work QC; berry variability analysis and phenolic maturity sampling.
In the Winery:

Zelma Long – Vilafonte winemaker and wine style maven. Decides on the harvest and structures winemaking
Bernard le Roux – winemaker; new team member; “gets the right things done at the right time”, in the winery. Bernard oversees the work and works with the crew.
Miles Mossop and crew - sort the grapes, mix the wine during fermentation, fill and clean the presses, clean and fill barrels, and more of the many types of work needed to grow the wine.

Elsewhere:
Mike Ratcliffe – advice, humor, brings cold beer; sells the wine.

Sugar development in winegrapes

Grapes have a particular motive for developing sugar; the grape berry carries the seeds; the tasty ripe grape is an attractive package (to birds; humans; dogs, and in the Cape, occasionally baboons.), and thus, the vine spreads its seeds.

Those supermarket grapes you buy are only about 16% sugar and usually are heavily cropped. Our wine grapes when ripe are usually 24-25% sugar, and have intense flavors; without which we cannot make good wine. But sugar is only part of what makes grapes tasty and wine a pleasure. More on that tomorrow.

However, today, here is some historical information to illustrate that each vintage has its particular ripening characteristics..look at this graph to compares the rate of sugar increase per day, for Cabernet, for 2004, 2005, and 2006.

(graph by Dr. Phil Freese)

Today we (Zelma, Phil, Ronald, Bernard, Julie) spent the morning at Vilafonte looking at our Merlot and Malbec; considering ripeness and readiness to pick. Despite the wind and warmth, the vines look very chipper; leaves nice and green, berries firm and fresh, definitely on a healthy track for ripening. Nothing is ready yet. Maybe next Wednesday? Julie will sample all these blocks Monday and we will visit them again Tuesday morning.

Zelma Long

Vilafonte 2006 Harvest Blog #1

This Blog's for you…

…for all of you who are curious, intrigued, or passionate about winemaking, wine growing, wine in general, South Africa and South African wine.

…it will track grapes from our site through to the wine.

…it will introduce (tomorrow) the "cast of characters" who touch the grapes and wine at one time or another and who help mold its characters.

…it will follow the winegrapes of Vilafonte Vineyards, a 30 acre vineyard located in the Paarl (Pearl) appellation of the Western Cape, South Africa.

Pre harvest jitters
Growing and harvesting wine is a dance with Mother Nature. Right now it's a fast dance; harvest nerves are tightly wound; we have had almost two weeks of very warm and windy weather; sugars (measured as Brix) in the grapes are skyrocketing.

Phil (one of the cast), who has been watching harvests for 30 years, has never seen vines produce sugar in the grapes at the rate off 1 Brix (% sugar) every three days, for this long. This is faassstttt.

Sugars predict potential alcohol but aren't directly related to what we all care about…flavor, good concentration (power); good balance (of alcohol acid and tannin); soft tannins…fleshy texture. The yum factor.

The wind here is "blowing like stink". Winemakers and winegrowers are pacing the vineyards. Pick now before sugars are too high? Or wait for ripe flavors and risk higher alcohols? How to make everyone happy in this dance????

More tomorrow.

Zelma Long

Vilafonte shines in San Francisco Chronicle

Well, the year certainly started with a bang. The San Francisco Chronicle just published an amazing ‘full page plus’ article by Thomas Elkjer on the front page of the food and wine section with a number of large photographs. For those of you that have not seen it, please click HERE.

Announcing the Vilafonté Harvest Blog
For all the blogheads out there, Zelma will be publishing a day-by-day harvest report with photos and anecdotes for the 2006 harvest starting at the beginning of February. (Southern Hemisphere remember) Please log daily and see what we are up to in the beautiful Mediterranean climate of the Cape – it will be fun.

Visit our website.

A cool new Vilafonté image

Zelma has just taken an amazing new photo that I wanted to post. It gives a fantastic impression of the location of our property in relation to the mountains! This is looking South towards the Drakenstein (Dragon) mountains. Stellenbosch is off to the right and Paarl is behind our left shoulder.

Vilafonte M & C get 5 stars in Germany!!

Great news today as both of our wines have received the ultimate score from influential German wine magazine 'Selektion'. http://www.vilafonte.com/media.html In an article on ICON wines called 'The best wines from South Africa', only 3 wines received 5 stars. Congratulations also to Kevin Arnold Shiraz! The ship continues sailing...

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Ready to blend 2004 vintage!!

October is going to be an exciting month as Phil, Zelma, Bernard and myself get to finalise the blends for the 2004 Vilafonte wines. Bernard Pre Le Roux has joined the team as Zelma's right hand winemaker and he is certainly in for a steep learning curve. Watch this space as the wines develop.

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