April 19th, 2010
Ornithologically Harvested ? Is that a word ? It is now ! Heres a graphic example of what happens when you dont have bird netting in place. The birds werent exactly hanging around waiting for Brix levels to hit 21, for acids to fall into place or for seed tannin levels to mature. Once they got a taste for it there was no holding them back. ...
April 18th, 2010
Day 2 of the Riesling and following a brief period of cold settling (10C) I have racked the clear-ish juice over to a new tank to begin fermentation. All the lees were discarded. Back on Day 1 the hand harveted Waipara fruit was whole bunch pressed and the press stopped at a maximum of 1.2 bar to retain only the best juice. No enzymes were used and only the ...
April 14th, 2010
Heres a quick clip of us receiving our first batch of Pinot Noir from Waipara. The fruit is pretty clean but we run it over the sort table anyway just to clear out the odd bit of leaf and dodgy fruit. One great thing we opted to do when building the winery and buying new equipment (2007) was not to have a must pump as I believe they are too harsh on the fruit. Our Pinot is conveyed up to ...
April 13th, 2010
Only literally of course ! Its strangely dark for the middle of the day.
April 12th, 2010
The first fruit of Vintage 2010 is now in. 3 tonnes of Pinot Noir from the Williams Hill vineyard in Waipara was processed last night. A mix of clones 115, 777 and 5, the fruit came in around 24.5 brix, pH 3.5, TA 7.0 g/L, mature seeds, delicate skins, even & moderate sized berries, and tasting great. This same vineyard was picked 12 days ...
April 12th, 2010
The Waipara region, an in particular, the eastern hillsides, are rich in limestone. At the northern end of the valley is the Weka Pass which is full of rocky limestone outcrops like the one above. A number of these rocks look like certain creatures. This one is one of the most well known - the mighty Frog Rock.
April 9th, 2010
If terroir is everything and great wines are made in the vineyard then this address is surely up there in the world of Pinot Noir. Blacks Avenue in Waipara produces outstanding fruit year after year and it ends up in some of New Zealands BEST Pinot Noirs, including Sandihurst!
Picking starts Monday !
April 8th, 2010
The countdown to harvest is on, perhaps starting as early as next week in Waipara. The grapes, as you see above, are safely submerged under the sea of netting. With the season largely over the next critical step in the winemakers mind is when to harvest. We have one eye on the weather and the other on grape sample maturity test results and are constantly ...
April 7th, 2010
Theres no one measure that can be applied when summing up the grape growing season. This year has been , for want of a better word, duller. It just never seemed to hit the heat levels that we normally expect over a summer in Waipara. Although fruit set was fine, December and January were not warm months. By the end of the season we will be lucky ...
April 6th, 2010
Courtesy of the excellent Debra Meiburg MW
Congratulations, apparently you’re semi-vertical and able to read. Even so, you might be suffering from what is known medically as veisalgia, which is an amalgamation of the Greek word algia (pain) and a Norwegian word (kveis) with too many consonants to pronounce this morning, which means “uneasiness following debauchery.”
The cure to alleviating “uneasiness” is as elusive as the Holy Grail and remedies run the ...
A native of Christchurch, and a curious wanderer of distant shores, Kirk’s talent for beautiful wines can, at least in part, be attributed to his dark decade in chartered accountancy. There, amongst the spreadsheets, columns and rows, Kirk is said to have developed the finely-tuned attention to detail he was later to apply to Sandihurst’s advantage.
It was following a culturally eye-opening period in Europe and Asia that Kirk experienced the moment of truth that was to drive him to abandon his pinstripes and retrain. He had tasted life, French pastries and dim sum and now he wanted more. So, roll up his neatly pressed sleeves he did. Enlightened and decidedly un-accountant-like, Kirk then took his new-found talents to California and Germany’s Pfalz where he refined his vinous skills and gained further invaluable experience. And a family. Finally, and after several happy years, the lure of New Zealand proved too strong to resist, and Kirk returned home and into the veritable arms of Sandihurst Winery.
Artist and alchemist, whilst Kirk’s Mr Nice Guy persona belies a dry wit and wicked laugh, his genius knows only modesty. When he declares his wine to be “okay”, it’s time to bank another medal.
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