May 2004
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Moon waxing Malolactic fermentation went well this year with no stuck fermentations and it was all over by the start of May. As we said last month we put this down to lower alcohol levels which give the bacteria a better chance of establishing themselves, and the fact that the population of bacteria in the cellar is higher. We did not inoculate, so all the bacteria are from the natural population. After all the work of the past couple of months there was a bit of a lull, so the staff were all given some leave. The timing was auspicious and carefully worked out - they would all be on leave during the waxing moon and be back in time for the waning moon, which is the best time for pruning. J-C took some time out to show the French girls around South Africa. Top of the list was the excitement of Kruger, and so they set off for a well earned break. As soon as the team reconvened it was back to work. It had rained a good deal in the last couple of weeks of April. The dams were all full again and the vineyard looked like a completely different place. The ground was soft enough to start sowing the cover crops. We went for a mixture heavy in lupins for their nitrogen fixing qualities. We had left the Mourvedre for an extended maceration while J-C was away and as it was the last to be harvested, so that had to be pressed and put into barrels. Mourvedre should do well in our location as it requires a long sunny growing season and ripens very late. It is the most widely grown variety in the southernmost area of Provence, Bandol, where there is very little summer rain. It likes sun and deep well drained but moisture holding soils. The best wines made from Mourvedre are known for their intense fruit and perfume of blackberries but it is difficult to achieve. It is easier to make very fleshy and taut wine much less accessible than Syrah. For this reason we only planted a small block and intend to use it for blending at first. However J-C is actually going to spend 3 months this winter with one of the best Mourvedre producers in Bandol, Chateau de Pibarnon, so he should come back with some tips on how best to elevate this variety. Knowing him we'll be ripping up the vineyard and starting again, but let's see. The big development this month was the arrival of the builders to start the tank construction. You may wonder why it has taken until our third vintage to actually build some tanks. The fact is that we have always been in two minds as to what to go for. We have been given advice by many and various people over the years, from steel through wood and concrete. In the end we delayed the decision until we really needed to make our minds up. Because the vineyard was young we knew the yield from each block would be low enough to do very small batches in what are in effect large plastic buckets. The idea is always to vinify each block separately. Next year however production will rise and we could not cope with such small scale facilities. Instead we are going to replicate our "many batch" technique on a larger scale. The tanks will be shallow, long and narrow so that there is a large surface area to volume ratio. This shape allows good contact with the cap and allows the winemaker to reach the centre and bottom of the tank from the side with his pigeage stick without falling in! A useful consideration. There is really only one way to make a row of tanks like that, and that is with reinforced concrete. Of course nothing to do with the fact that some of the greatest wine in the world is made in concrete (e.g.. Ch Petrus, Chapoutier). When John M was visiting Chapoutier in Tain he was proudly shown an old concrete sarcophagus that had been in use for many years as a fermentation vessel, being not far from the perfect proportions for such use. Each tank will have a capacity of 12,000 litres and we will have 14, which happens to coincide with the number of different vineyard blocks we have in the 16 hectares. There will be one row of seven on each side of the cellar and seven is Tom's lucky number so it all fits! The concrete is not the full story though. The fronts of the tanks will need to have access, so this requires a stainless steel plate with a door and valves to be inserted in the front wall. There must be airtight lids for maceration. A stainless steel lid requires a frame to fit into so that it can be lowered to the level of the juice. There must be cooling plates which can be lowered into the tanks to control the temperature during fermentation. These need to be connected to the cooling system so they have sufficient cold water running through them. The trap doors will be 3.5 metres above the cellar floor to allow the must to drop into the press and so the height of the tank walls will be 5.2 metres above the floor. A system of galvanized steel gantries, walkways and steps will have to built to allow for safe access. All this is positioned on a platform on each side to the cellar 3.2 metres above the floor, so that as much floor space can be usefully exposed. Sounds like a fairly Heath Robinson design, but we are convinced it is the best way of sticking to our ideals of gravity flow wherever possible, small batch open fermentation, hand pigeage and extended maceration.
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