November 2002
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Bob Backlash After a long wet winter and a very short spring the weather really started heating up. J-C and the boys took their first plunge of the Summer into the dam. The vine team had really taken good shape over the spring and Manie and J-C were very happy with them. We are lucky to have a great foreman who lives on the farm, known affectionately as Oom Saansie. He fetches his team each morning from the village and has them well disciplined. They seem enthusiastic and are learning fast. Oom Saansie is somebody we will invest some time and effort into as he and J-C work really well together. He is an asset and can mean much more to TMV in the long term. We have had one or two false starts with a couple of guys who seem like they are going to rise to the job and take on some responsibility, but we have been disappointed. We want to build a team from top to bottom and an important part of the equation is a good foreman who we can delegate to and trust to get things done. More important we need someone who actually wants to learn, take on a management role and get well rewarded.
As the vine team finished October so they started November, tying the Mourvedre arms down. As can be seen in the photos by the second week of November the Syrah was about 40% ahead of the Cab in terms of shoot length, but the Cab has shorter internodes (less vigour) with roughly the same number of leaves. The bossie slaner (mower) was repaired so they gave the cover crops a trimming. Hopefully the exposure to heat and sun that the soil was getting will hit the bollworm population that is living on the ground before they start devouring our vines. Manie purchased some insect books to find out what we have on our patch. He was blown away by the complexity of the issue. There is actually a multitude of insect species living on the farm. So far only the 2001 Cabernet has had to be dosed with organic repellent against some snout beetle derivative. The hope is that with the cover crop and minimal applications we have brought back some sort of balance. One indicator is the numbers of aphids around especially on the wind breaks, but there are none on the vines. Also in the second week of the month the older Cab and Syrah started flowering. We were now into stage 2 of our first vintage. Flowering continued during the rest of the month and was pretty even. The main danger was the wind which can blow the caps off the flowers and the pollen gets lost. With our open canopies, due to only having one shoot per bearing position this was a real danger. The process of flowering and fruit set (fertilization) is a very important stage in the vintage as only fertilized flowers grow into berries. Normally about 30% of flowers become berries, the rest fall off. By the end of November we were half way through flowering, and the earlier bunches had set pretty nicely. The crop load was quite heavy with an average of two bunches per shoot all round. On the younger vines, the two cordon arms were regarded as two shoots for this summer, and we left 2 bunches per shoot (arm) for now too. The idea was to keep the vigour back a bit with the larger crop load, and then at veraison we can move through the blocks to even out and help with the ripeness levels. We'll probably do two crop thinnings per block, one for the earlier and one for the later bunches. As the weather has not been excessively hot to date, flowering has taken place over a relatively long period. This will of course tend to extend the harvest. We also noticed at the end of the month that there were some weaker vines amongst the older Cab (especially) and Syrah. We dropped the crop to one bunch per shoot on these vines, but some still seemed to be struggling. A couple of these vines were showing a bit of nutrient deficiency too. We were happy with the overall vigour of the Syrah but we were hoping not to have to compost this season as that might tip the balance to overly vigourous, but now we think we should consider applying some to those areas where the vines are struggling. This unevenness was always going to be a concern in an organic vineyard because throwing bags of fertilizer at the vines is not an option. Some areas of ground are different from others, but in the long run the whole vineyard will find a balance of its own. Hopefully by minimal intervention and careful encouragement of the natural elements our wine will reflect its environment. It will be unique because it comes from where it does. That is the only thing that no other wine can do. We are trusting that careful application of cellar techniques will turn the raw material into a fabulous experience for the olfactory senses, but we are also trying to create something original. On this subject, and coincidently following on from last month's diary, Tom G-W was privileged to be able to attend a wine tasting hosted by Ch'ng Poh Tiong publisher of "The Wine Review" and one of Asia's (and the world's) foremost wine critics and writers and certainly one of the most lucid. In part of his talk he explained what he described as the Coca-Colonization of wine. He points to the main culprits as certain American wine writers who promote a mono-formula, recipe wine regardless of where the grapes are grown. The wine they want and the wine they give 100 points to are the "Big, Monster, Awesome" wines whether produced in Bordeaux, California, Chile, Spain, Italy or Australia. He equates this with the way Coca- and Pepsi-Cola can be produced in any factory in the world to be exactly the same. He considers that in order to satisfy these powerful critical forces some wine producers are willing to sacrifice the heritage of their soil and history (see the same theme coming out). Because the influence of these writers is so great what they promote sells and what Poh Tiong considers so shameful is the harmonization and standardization of wine which this causes, steamrollering all the subtle regional differences that have existed happily beside each other for so many years. He says, "If it is a white wine, to be a great "100-point" champion, the wine must look, smell and taste like melted vanilla ice-cream mixed with whipped cream, cookies and chips, caramel and fudge.... To be a truly great red wine, it must be black as Coca Cola, bigger than a Big Mac and has the concentration and extraction of 10 (family size) packets of sticky chewing gum..........." He concludes, "....we hold dearest those things that are elegant, subtle and complex. Since when did we need Big, Awesome, Monster, Coca-Cola wines." Maybe the backlash has started. Food for thought. Copyright © 2000 Tulbagh Solutions. All rights reserved. |
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