Muddy Notes, November 2008
T'is the beginning of September, another vintage over, pruning almost finished, bottling of the 2008 wines has begun and it is now spring! As we have had the wettest winter I can recall, complete with floods, impassable bridges and slips on the roads, I cannot pretend to be displeased! We have had a fantastic season, my heartfelt thanks to everyone, without their dedication this would not be possible. This year sees us bottle the first of our Growers Series label which we are very excited about. Muddy Water home vineyards are currently undergoing organic certification and the wines will in future be labeled as such. We have some vineyards that we lease and manage ourselves but as these sites are not as yet in the organic phase we have decided that any grapes that do not come from our home block will be Growers Series. We have just bottled the Rose (Pinot Noir) and the Lough Vineyard Riesling. This week we will be bottling the 2007 Pinot Noirs, Syrah, Dry Riesling and James Hardwick Riesling. Late October the Sauvignon Blanc and Unplugged Riesling. We are planning some open weekends, meet the people who make Muddy Water what it is - Walk around the vineyard with our viticultural staff - taste the wines with our winemaker. 1st weekend of December and 1st weekend of March. Details to follow.
 The 07/08 season was definitely a mixed bag. The Muddy Water vineyard is sited in a sheltered position at the base of hills. This means we are warmer than other vineyards in the valley and so usually the first to start growing. This also means that we are more vulnerable to frost as our vines are often more advanced and therefore more susceptible. The Friday before Labour weekend saw frosts up and down the whole of New Zealand and Waipara was no exception. Our frost alarm went off at about 8pm on the Thursday night and there was still frost on the ground the following morning at around 9am. Our hill blocks and later varieties such as the Syrah, Riesling and Pinotage were largely unaffected, but the lower blocks were quite badly frost affected. At the time it was heart breaking to see all the new seasons growth damaged, but fortunately for us that was the only frost for our site that season and as it occurred relatively early in the growing season, the vines had time to recover. The rest of the summer was warm and dry up until about February. Perfect weather over flowering made for excellent fruit set and so by Christmas time it was hard to believe we had been frosted, as crop levels were near normal, in fact many blocks had more fruit than we had had in previous years. During February, we had some heavy rain, which did lead to some disease issues for us as we no longer use fungicides on our vines. But some timely leaf plucking to help everything dry out and careful hand picking by our team meant the fruit made it to the winery in good condition. We have now made the full commitment to the organic programme with Asure Quality and are in our first year of stand down. Two more years and we will be fully certified as organic. To help in our conversion we have invested in an undervine cultivator. The machine works up the soil under and between the vines, negating the need for herbicide. In the short time we have been using it, many of the previously hard to control weeds have disappeared and been replaced by much more manageable grasses and clover. To help out the undervine cultivator, we are also now the proud owners of six organic Wiltshire ewes. It is a small flock at the moment but we are hoping to breed and build numbers sufficient to keep down the grass and weeds in and around the vineyard, reducing our need to run the tractor. We have also been dabbling in a bit of biodynamics. Planting our cover crops according to the moon, using valerian preps to help with frost resistance and applying 501 to encourage soil activity. It is early days, but I personally have been trialing it at home in my vege garden and so far I can certainly see the benefits. Pruning is now well underway, wtih the early signs of spring appearing and hopes for another great season. For us it was a big one. The winery was designed to process about 200 tonnes – for the first time we tested this with 210 tonnes. The good news is it works and it all fits. We had been expecting 150 T and I hasten to say that Muddy Water was on target but some of our processing customers (no names!) had some problems counting. The growing season was a roller-coaster ride. Bud break was quite early, especially in the Hare’s Breath Vineyard, and things were looking fabulous until Jack Frost arrived on October 19th. We were questioning our decision to use passive frost control (cultivated bare earth) however a walk around the vineyards with our neighbours revealed that helicopters and wind machines hadn’t always worked either so we were happy that we’d saved the money. The spring and early summer got better and better and we had a fantastic flowering and fruit set so our yield estimates were reassessed. December and January were hot and dry then in early February the farmer’s prayers were answered with 100mm (4 inches) of rain. Some rain would have been fine but 100mm! Followed by cool damp weather for the rest of February and March – berry size increased markedly – as did our yield estimates. A lot of hand leafing and a green thin in some blocks at the end of verasion helped to keep things in line in the lead-up to harvest. Thanks to the cooler weather we didn’t start picking until late March when we picked the Hare’s Breath. A short break to bottle the 2007 Chardonnay and it was all on until May 8th when we finished with Syrah and Sticky Riesling – the latter at a whooping 47 brix – the sweetest fruit we have ever processed. Miranda and her team in the vineyard did a great job getting the fruit in on time and to specs under some pretty difficult conditions, the damp weather hasn’t really stopped yet! Things in the winery went pretty well – some very long hours and the waste water system were the main problems. For various reasons (language, size and shape) I was the most suitable person to repair the waste water – suffice to say it’s something close to fixing a sewer. One night I was down there being filmed by Guillaume, our French helper – "dees is Beelinda and he is in the sheet!" Speaking of Guillaume – what a guy! He started at Muddy Water shortly before his 21st birthday in November and stayed until late May. He came highly recommended by our friends the Bret Brothers (great Macon producers www.bretbros.com/en ) – Guillaume is very interested in and knowledgable about organics and biodynamics and very committed to getting as much as possible out of his New Zealand experience. When he left Muddy Water he traveled around, attending the 2008 Biodynamic Conference, working at Dry River, Isabel Estate and Felton Road before snowboarding for a week at Broken River and heading home to work another harvest in Burgundy. Our other imported harvest worker, John Schulz, from California had his first harvest and a baptism by fire. It’ll be easier next time, Johnny! One of my lasting harvest images will be John on Anzac day wearing a police hat over his vintage beard and long hair looking like one of the "Village People"! Thanks to the beard and the work, John returned to the US completely unrecognizable from the clean-shaven overweight boy I picked up from Christchurch airport in early February. 2008 was the first harvest at Muddy Water for our old friend Julian Ball. We were pretty miffed when Julian whisked our former vineyard manager, Lynda, away from us and up the aisle, a couple of years ago. But he made up for it by offering his help this harvest. It was great for me to have a sidekick who is sensible, calm, patient with the young guys and a local. Better still Julian has stayed on to help on a casual basis – something I couldn’t have done without. The other highlight from the 2008 vintage was the arrival of the Cheesemonger at our 5 o’clock drinks. Jane kindly and generously saw that we were going to need a lot of fuel to get us through vintage and so regular shipments of everyone’s favourite cheeses arrived to keep us going – along with kegs of Brew Moon ‘Amberley Pale Ale’ (we’ve moved on from bottles and beer fines!) This year also saw the first "Fine" Wine dinners. As the kegs had made beer fines redundant we moved onto "Fine" Wine. Guillaume set the standard early in the harvest after a "French" moment with a bottle of 2006 Brett Brothers "Clos de Grand Pere". Other delicious wines followed, (any small mistake will get you a wine fine at Muddy Water) accompanied by Jane’s delicious dinners, and somehow harvest didn’t seem so hard. Belinda
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