WINEMAKING

For the technophiles, here is a description of a typical year’s vintage at the winery. 

Our winemaker is Matt Connell of Olssen’s Garden Vineyard who produces our wine under contract, but most certainly, in close consultation with Crawford. 

For our Pinots, generally the fruit is harvested in early April to mid April (but in 2007 it was mid May).  Because of our exceptionally dry climate, there is no disease pressure, and hence no horrible sprays, and we typically pick at 24-25 °Brix.  Because of our remarkable situation (terroir), at this Brix, the grapes are “sugar ready” at the same time as they are “physiologically” ready.  This gives us the remarkable silky velvety mouthfeel so sought after in a premium quality Pinot noir wine. Of course, flavour is maximised as well, and the ability to “hang” our fruit out longer means that skin tannins, and even stalk and pip tannins are ripe and brown, instead of green.  In premium years, we also “whole bunch” ferment a portion of our fruit in order to extract extra grape tannins from the stalks, as opposed to oak tannins derived from barrels.

Must pH ranges from 3.20 -3.30 with titratable acidity of 7.6 – 8.5g/L typical.

For the first 5 days or so, the musts are kept cool at 12-13°C  before fermentation is encouraged by warming to 17°C and inoculating with cultured yeast.  Prior to inoculation, the musts are punched down daily and during fermentation, they are punched down 3-4 times daily.  We keep fermentation temperatures at a maximum of 31°C.  Fermentation takes about 7-9 days typically.  Most of the ferments are pressed off at about 16-20 days.  The wine is pressed extremely gently in an air bag press at no more than 1.2 bar.  The free run wine and pressings are combined and settled overnight before being racked to barrel.  Barrels from a number of French coopers are utilised with an overall new oak ratio of about 30%.  The wine undergoes malo-lactic fermentation during Winter.

In December, the barrels are tasted by the winemaker and Crawford with a view to selecting the “best of the best” barrels for the label ”Bannock Brae Estate Barrel Selection Pinot noir” with the balance being designated our “Goldfields” wine.  In February, the wine is racked out of the barrels, the components blended, then bottled.  We strive to minimize intervention during the winemaking process, and indeed, for the 2007 vintage, our “Barrel Selection” and “Goldfields” Pinot was neither fined nor filtered before bottling – very unusual for a NZ wine.  In other words, it was so spectacularly perfect in the barrel, that we just bottled it straight from the barrel.  Even our second tier wine “Goldfields” was so good that we decided not to fine it also, but we did give it a coarse filtration. 

Post bottling, typical data are:

Alcohol                       13.5 – 14%
pH                               3.55
Titratable Acidity        6.3g/L
Residual sugar             <1.5g/L