Christmas wines

Christmas is that wonderful time of year when you get to eat and drink to your heart’s content. Choosing appropriate wines to match the food is always a challenge, as Christmas in South Africa takes place in the height of summer. We tend to have cold food, and thus you have to choose the wines a bit more carefully.

This year we will start off with some locally produced bubbly. Robertson is slowly getting a very good reputation for the production of Sparkling wine (made in the proper Champagne method). This will be followed by our Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

Obviously mains will need red. I have found that it is better chilling the wines to 15°C in summer. If you serve them at room temperature, they are normally 25°C, which is far too warm. The wines taste less fruity and more alcoholic. In summer it is also best to serve younger fruitier wines.

The highlight for Christmas this year is a bottle of 1979 Excelsior Muskadel Jerepigo that was given to us recently. Muskadel Jerepigo is a fortified Muscat wine, made in the Beames de Venise style. I have not yet tasted this wine, but generally Muscats do age very well. The wine looks like it is in good condition. We are pairing it with a homemade Green Fig and Port ice cream and hope that we will be pleasantly surprised.

Merry Christmas.

scorched earth

A few weeks ago I got an urgent call on my cell phone. There was a fire in the vineyards!

I rushed around trying o find whatever I could that might be usefull to fight fire. The first thing I saw was a rake. Looked promising but ultimately was a failure as it just bent. I eventually settled on the normal standby – a leafy branch.

I called all employees within earshot, and then rushed to the fire (I could see smoke in the distance). After about 10 minutes of frantic beating and gulping of smoke, the fire in one of our Cabernet Blocks was brought under control.

Then the search started for the cause. The fire was in the middle of the block and a tractor was mowing the grass in the rows. We like to have a lot of grass cover, or what is known as mulch, in the vineyards. The reason for this is that it promotes water retention, and provides a food source for microbial life and worms. These creatures are beneficial for the vines as they aerate the soil and help the plants acquire minerals. The drawback of having a lot of groundcover is that there is an increase in fire risk.

Finally we figured out what the cause was. And no the tractor driver does not smoke! He was mowing in a particularly rocky area, and the blades of the mower must have clipped a stone. This in turn caused a spark, which ignited the mulch. Go figure!!

Fortunately this was a “cold” fire that ran quickly over the surface. The vines will survive but have lost this year’s crop.

Spring work is done

Here I am on the last day of spring, and we have managed to complete all our crucial spring tasks. The vines have been suckered (water shoots removed), tucked and topped. This is when the perfectionist side of me comes out. My absolute favourite thing on the farm is seeing long lines of perfectly manicured vines. Perfectly looking vines do not necessarily produce better quality wines, but I will leave that for my next blog.

The work proceeded quicker this year than the previous two years, as we managed to escape the torrential downpours of the past few years. This has led to less growth, and only needing to trim the vines once. We have also experienced a cool spring, with a couple of extremely hot days of over 35ºC (close to 100ºF). These irregular temperatures do not aid vigorous growth. And did I mention the wind.

We probably experienced more wind this spring than anyone can remember. If shoots were not tucked in on time, they would have been blown off. Wind also restricts growth as the leaves stomata close, and no photosynthesis can take place.

The only job to do before harvest is to remove unwanted bunches from overbearing vines. This helps concentrate the vines energy to help ripen the remaining bunches.

So far things look promising for a good 2010 harvest.

Something for the community

We recently had the privilege of opening a computer room at the local farm school. For those of you in the first world this may not sound like a very significant event but for the schoolchildren who have very little access to information technology and research resources (the nearest library being not particularly well stocked and about a 6km walk from the farm) it was a momentous occasion.

Last year it was bought to our attention that the majority of our staff’s children weren’t progressing past Grade 8. We set up a meeting to discuss this with the local primary school and to identify what could be done to provide the children with a more solid foundation, particularly in mathematics and language.

The teachers identified three areas that they thought should be most importantly addressed.
1. There was a need for a remedial teacher to provide additional attention to those children that were struggling to grasp basic concepts.
2. The establishment of an aftercare facility to provide children with the support that they were not getting at home to do their homework.
3. A computer room would enable students to learn computing skills but more importantly provide them with some fantastic educational software.

We were able to address the first two areas almost immediately and Excelsior started an aftercare facility for the Excelsior staff’s children and employed two remedial teachers at the school. The third was to take a while longer. All the local farmers whose employees’ children attend the school, were approached for the funding of the computer room. All donated in varying degrees, and the special room was built. Khanye, an NGO, provided computers, furniture and software with the whole project costing about R400 000 (about $54 000).

It’s great to see wine sales translate into the funding source for such incredible projects!

Spring and its hazards

We are half way through spring in the Robertson Valley. This is actually the busiest time of the year in the vine’s cycle. Many people believe that harvest is busier, but I find that harvest is fairly routine. During springtime you have to do the following:
· Suckering – this is the removal of excess shoots (very time consuming)
· Lifting trellis wires – to stop shoots being blown off during strong spring winds, which we experienced last night.
· Trim the shoots when they reach a certain height, otherwise they will topple over and become unruly.
· Monitor for disease – Powdery mildew is the most common disease followed by Downy mildew.
· Spray if disease is identified.

So far the jobs have gone well, but we do have a small outbreak of downy mildew. This is fungal disease, which you first identify on the leaf as an “oil spot”. The disease can attack the bunch as well, especially during flowering. It causes the young bunch to wither away and die, which is obviously a financial problem. Ideal conditions for the development of the disease is known as the 10, 10, 24 combination. This stands for:
· 10 millimeters of rain
· A temperature of greater that 10 degrees Celsius
· The leaf must be wet for 24 hours or longer.

We have had two such events in the last two weeks. We have already seen the first “oil spots” on the leaves, so we have to dust-off the spray carts and get to work. We do not like spraying, and in a normal year we do not spray at all (thanks to Robertson’s healthy climate), but in this situation it is not worth the risk.

We generally use contact sprays, as the plant does not take them up. We are using copper, as this kills the mildew, and as been used for centuries on vines. Organic growers tend to use copper for downy mildew, but in different formats to us.

This is one of the aspects of grape growing where you have to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of certain actions. In this case we believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

US and Chardonnay

I have just spend close to 3 weeks traveling around North America – more specifically LA, Vancouver, NY, New Jersey and Memphis. Yes I did go to Graceland, and Beale street, and ate great BBQ!

Selling wine in the US is great becomes you get direct honest feedback. If people feel that they can sell your wine and make a couple of bucks, they will buy. One thing that struck me on this trip was how amazed people were with our Chardonnay.

I was often told – I don’t drink Chard, its too oaky, or I have too many Chards on my shelf, so why would I carry a South African one. Once they tried the Excelsior, they were invariably impressed and bought the wine.

We produce a very lightly oaked style (many asked if there is any oak in the wine) that has good acidity. More importantly, there is no malo-lactic fermentation done on the wine, which gives chardonnay those typically buttery flavours. Our flavour profile is lemony, and fresh. The wine definitely tastes like Chard, but we want the consumer to reach for a second (and even third) glass.

I believe the wine industry missed a trick by producing oceans full of those oaky, oily chardonnays, as the consumers have been totally turned off by them.

Snails

Excelsior prides itself on looking for environmentally friendly practices, and this extends to pest control. Far and away the most costly pest on Excelsior is the humble snail. For the past decade we have moved towards using less and less herbicides, and avoid sloughing as this has a detrimental effect on soil structure. This is known as minimal tillage. The benefits are a more “living” soil, as there is plenty of food for earthworms (which burrow down and open up the soil, allowing oxygen and root penetration), as well as micro – organisms, which help the plant access nutrients.

The major drawback is that this provides the perfect environment for snails to breed. There is plenty of shelter, and food all year round. And can they breed! A snail is hermaphroditic (both sexes can lay eggs) and each snail lays approximately 50 eggs each.

Now the harmful snail is the non-edible small white snail called Theba Pisana. It absolutely thrives in the arid lime soils of the Robertson area. It uses the lime to produce a very hard shell, which makes it fairly unpalatable for the traditional snail predator – the duck. Ducks work well for controlling some species of snails and slugs, but not the white snail.

We use a poisonous bait (mixture of Bran and poison) that dehydrates the snail, and is quite effective. The problem is that animals, especially dogs, are also fond of it, and it can kill them. Using poisons is also not good for the environment, and it is damn expensive.

I have been searching for a softer cure for snails, and I believe that I have found one. Iron is poisonous to snails. It is the ultimate diet pill for them, as it completely suppresses their appetite, until they starve to death. I use a common agricultural fertilizer called iron sulphate, and mix it into the bran in place of the normal poison. This year I have done about a third of the farm with this mixture and will monitor the outcome. But so far it looks extremely promising, and the added bonus is that it is very cheap.

competions

Excelsior has just won a Gold and Double Gold medal in a very important wine competition. We are very proud of this achievement, and it should help sales along nicely. But winning medals is not what producing wine is all about.

Wines in a competition are tasted blind, which means that a judge has no idea of the identity of the wine. This is the only fair way of judging, as our knowledge of a product will influence our judgement of it. If you know you are drinking the most expensive wine in the world, you are going to try and enjoy it no matter what!

If your wine does not win in a competition, it does not mean that the wine is not good. All it means is that it did not stand out in line-up of maybe 90 odd wines.

We place far greater emphasis on things like sales rates - if the wine is selling well, customers must be enjoying it. Another trick I have learned in the past few years is to do a google search of my particular wine, eg Excelsior Cabernet 2007. I get to see what customers are saying about the wine online. This way I am able to track and compare vintages and styles, and what customers feel about them. And comments are spot on. There have been times when I have not been totally sure of a wine, and I will notice more negative comments and descriptions. Obviously you are never going to please all, but if most enjoy the wine, then you are on the right track.

So the best judge is probably the person who is drinking the wine, as he or she is the one who has to enjoy it or not.

the beginining

I am the fifth generation to be privileged to work and own Excelsior.

Times have changed since Koos de Wet (my Great, Great Grandfather) bought the farm in 1859. The farm was just native bush, with no buildings. Those days he farmed with ostriches, cattle, fruits such as peaches and apricots, as well as producing sweet fortified wines. South Africa in those days had very little infrastructure, so any fruit that was produced had to be dried, and any wine that was produced had to be fortified with spirits to preserve it. Cattle could be driven to market. For the rest agriculture was subsistence based.

My Great Grandfather, Kowie, introduced Hackney horses to Excelsior, and produced sweet fortified wines. The invention of the motorcar ended the Hackney horse industry, so he turned his attention to racehorses. During his time on the farm the ostrich industry also collapsed dramatically.

My Grandfather, Oscar, bred thoroughbred race horses, as well as Dairy cattle. He also produced sweet fortified wines. As you can see we always produced wine of some sorts.

The modern era of agriculture started with my father, Freddie, who introduced dynamic ideas like drip irrigation, and build a modern winery in 1981. This enabled modern dry wines to be produced. In the beginning these wines were mainly white, but in the early 1990’s reds were introduced as they suite the terroir of Excelsior. Due to changes in South Africa’s politics, we were able to export, so this was the next major change in way things were done at Excelsior.

Today Excelsior sells wine in over 20 countries, and we travel the world to sell our wines. So things have changed considerably in the past 150 years – unimagined changes. I am using the technology available to bring you insights into what it is like to be a wine farmer in South Africa 150 years after the business started.