Hello from Summer in Central Otago!
We have had a funny old season in the vineyard so far, it’s been warm so things are on track but lots of weather coming through the region. This has made life pretty nice for the vineyard in terms of water and growth has been great. From our perspective we’ve lost a few more work days to rain than we normally do (-read, normally it barely rains at all) which has kept it interesting.
The crop looks good and summer seems to have hit us this week with temperatures in to the 30’s. At this rate we look like harvesting around the 4th week of March with the Infusion Block at Rocky Point… Of course the weather is still in charge so we’ll see…
The winery build has been going well and so far is on track – we have to be ready before the fruit is, so there is some pressure… The building gets a roof on Wednesday and the press arrived a week ago which was very exciting for us.
We have just finished Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration, my last as chairman. I look forward to coming along to the next one in more relaxed form, keep the end of January next year free for the best wine event in New Zealand! Great to catch up with François Millet during Celebration and we showed his 2017 Cuvée Aux Antipodes for the first time, there’s a great review on Jamie Goode’s Blog ‘WineAanorak.com’.
In the winery we are preparing the white wines for bottling with the Pinot Gris and Riesling coming out of barrel shortly. Both wines look good with great aromatics and freshness despite the record setting summer of 2018. The Rocky Point Pinot Noir 2018 will be bottled this month as well and that wine is coming out of barrel this week.
Best wishes from the team here in Central Otago !
Paul