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This is a description so commonly used by winemakers that some might think it does not mean much. Wrong. It is especially apt when used by small winegrowers to describe their process and wines.

Perhaps hand-crafted wines are best understood in terms of their opposite, factory-produced wines. Many of the best known wine brands in New Zealand and the well-known Australian brands sold here, are in this category. They are well-known because they are made in huge quantities and show up everywhere. Also in this category are the $7.99 wines you have never heard of before which grace aisle ends in supermarkets. These carry brand names created by the factory producers and sometimes by the supermarkets themselves to peddle surplus, mass-produced wine which the makers do not necessarily want to associate with their name and/or for which there is no other market.

Factory produced wines are made from grapes grown in huge vineyards, where much of the work is done mechanically. These grapes are harvested by machines which agitate the vines so vigorously that individual berries are shaken off the vine on to a conveyor system which deposits them in a large bin. All grapes, ripe and rotten, and all manner of other rubbish is also shaken into the bin – dead leaves and other plant material, bird nests and whatever insects, spiders and caterpillars are there at the time. The process is so thoroughly mechanized that it is not possible to remove this stuff.

After fermentation and a time of aging these wines are likely to require a good deal of treatment before they are bottled, to remove off-odours and off-flavours which may have resulted from the effect on the wine of this extraneous matter. 

Hand-crafted wines on the other hand are just that: Much of the vineyard work, including harvesting, is done by hand. It cannot be stressed too strongly how important hand-picking is to wine quality – individual pickers making decisions based on what their eyes tell them, about what to include and what to discard.

Vineyard work is just the beginning of the hand-crafting process. At every step in winemaking, small wineries are able to pay close attention to every ferment and to the care and aging of every wine after fermentation has finished. Partly this is because the proprietor is more often than not closely involved, but also it is fair to say that in a small operation with a small and closely-knit team there is likely to be a greater sense of pride and ownership amongst the workers. 

Small scale and all it entails is why this sort of winemaking is less cost-effective, and the wines may be more expensive. But the upside is that the final product has benefited from the individual care and attention it has received throughout. The wines from small operations producing all their own fruit express the individuality of the vineyard, the variation of the season and weather, and the passion of the individuals who produced them. 

While “hand-crafted” may sound like a cliché, if used appropriately in the context of winegrowing it is an apt description of the process and the outcome. And it accurately describes the processes and products of all of the wines grown and produced by Matakana winegrowers. 

Robin Ransom

The next few weeks for winemakers are an incongruous mix of being busy getting ready for the vintage, but also getting impatient at the seemingly long drawn-out waiting period whilst the grapes become fully ripe.

The busy-ness takes a number of forms. We are still putting bird nets on the last of our blocks of grapes as I write. This is perhaps the most tedious vineyard job of the lot. It takes a good deal of time and because we use multi-row nets we need half a rugby team to do the job. Inevitably some nets will have holes and tears which need to be repaired, which is also very time consuming. We need to calculate crop size for each grape variety and use this information to work out how much and which types of yeasts, yeast nutrients, fruit enzymes and other vintage consumables we need. We also use this information to calculate how many barrels to buy, and which types and sizes. Barrel merchants have been peddling their wares to us over the last three months or so.

We need to prepare the winery for the onslaught. This involves making sure that all equipment is serviceable – must pump, juice and wine pumps, hoses and valves, destemmer-crusher, wine press, refrigeration unit, juice filter and so on. We need to ensure that we have enough empty tanks to accommodate the expected crop, which may involve preparing some of last year’s wine to be sent off for bottling. The laboratory equipment needs to be functioning and laboratory supplies in stock. The winery needs to be tidied up to remove the inevitable clutter which accumulates during the rest of the year and all of the tanks need to be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized.

The process is complicated for us by the requirement to have our annual “Wine Standards Management Plan” audit at this time of year. This is a recently introduced additional bit of bureaucratic compliance we have to undertake at great expense to ourselves, to demonstrate that we keep our records correctly and go about our grape-growing and winemaking in a way which ensures we do not poison our customers.

The impatience we experience at this time of year comes from a combination of keeping an eye on the weather and urging the ever-more-vulnerable bunches of grapes to hurry up and ripen fully, all the while trying to quell the anxiety which builds during this period. This process is more accentuated in a season such as we have had so far, when the amount of sunshine and heat seems to have been somewhat less than we would normally expect. In fact we are threatened by a late summer storm as I write.

If we have made all of our preparations all we can do now is sit back and wait, in anticipation…..

Robin Ransom

Matakana Winegrowers Inc.

March 2 2012

February 2012

The season marches on ….

The 2011/2012 growing season has been a little unusual so far, although I think that is a comment we make about most seasons for one reason or another. This season was marked by a reasonable spring so we had a pretty good fruit set, but a cool and moist early summer, which seems to have delayed fruit maturity somewhat - so far.

Plenty of heat from here on should enable things to catch up, and NIWA (No Idea What Awaits?) is telling us that the La Nina pattern we have been in is receding and we should be in for a “normal” late summer and autumn – whatever that means. If it means no tropical cyclones, plenty of heat and very little rain we are all for it. We think the dairy farmers have had a fair go with their weather requirements so now it is our turn.

We are in the midst of netting right now. And none too soon – there seem to be lots of birds this year, and a flock of starlings which looks to be about 200 strong has been menacing our reds – carmenère in particular, in the last few days. The big burst of heat we had late last week brought the onset of veraison (when the berries start to go red and soften) very rapidly so suddenly there was food for birds.

Winebar

We have been rather busy in the cellar door and winebar over the summer. Lots of visitors and diners relaxing on the terrace and contemplating the beautiful vista whilst sipping on a chilled Clos de Valerie or Vin Gris and polishing off one of our delicious winetasters platters. We have had some very nice encounters with visitors this summer – regulars and overseas tourists alike. And having our name out on the highway means we continue to discover relatives, mostly rather remote, or people who could possibly be relations if only we could find the missing link…..

China 

The Sunday Star-Times published a very informative article last week which described our Chinese venture. Briefly we are involved in the establishment of a very large vineyard and winery in the province of Shanxi in north-central China, for which we will provide winemaking expertise and our name. We presently export wine to Shanxi under the Ransom name and the idea is that the Chinese operation will also be called “Ransom” to capitalize on the good name our brand is already establishing there. So far 600,000 vines have been planted (makes our 12,000 or so look rather paltry!) but there is plenty more to plant, for an expected 1000 acres eventually. A couple of facts about China and wine: China is apparently already the world’s fifth largest producer of wine and they have just overtaken the UK as the world’s fifth largest consumer of it.

New Release

Dark Summit 2009 was released a couple of weeks ago. At this stage it is youthful but starting to open up nicely – iron fist in a velvet glove might be a good description of it at present. The 2009 version is a very similar blend to its recent predecessors – around half cabernet sauvignon, 30% or so of carmenère, and the remainder made up by malbec and cabernet franc.

Cheers

Marion, Robin and the team at Ransom Wines

If you are visiting the exciting new Wynyard Quarter on the Auckland waterfront, make sure to take a look at the intriguing wine experience at Big Picture Wines.

Ransom Clos de Valerie Pinot Gris and Ransom Carmenère are both in the new winetasting line-up.