By the Huia Crew, http://www.huia.net.nz/
Huia's Juice Tray
At the moment, we are in the middle of the Sauvignon Blanc pick. Sauvignon crops have been quite small for us this year averaging about 5 to 7 tonnes to the hectare (35 – 48 hl/ha). This has resulted from a combination of factors including cool flowering but also some very careful pruning and shoot thinning by the vineyard crew. We pick our Sauvignon very early in the morning (4am) when the fruit is at its coldest. This means the fruit can retain all the wonderful aromatics that the Marlborough climate gives us. We pick it into small 1000 litre bins and press it cold without crushing to minimise skin contact and phenolics.
Watch the video below the see the Sauvignon make his way from harvest to press
The stony silts at our Rapaura Road vineyards provide ripe passionfruit, melon and citrus flavours into the Sauvignon Blanc. Our Winsome vineyard grows on heavy Orthic Clays. These soils give us more structure and some bright greengage plum, gooseberry and nettle flavours.
All of our Huia Sauvignon Blanc is grown organically. No pesticides or herbicides are used to grow the fruit. We use careful canopy management and benign biological products to manage any disease. Weeds under the vines are managed using a Braun undervine weeding machine and by hand weeding. We also make lots of compost from our winery marc and prunings to fertilise the soil, encourage good soil biology for healthy vines.
Sauvignon Blanc on Vine
All the Gewurztraminer is organically grown on our Winsome vineyard and was picked a few days ago. The heavy clay soils mean that no irrigation was used and it has resulted in a small crop of lovely perfumed fruit. It has been quite a battle to keep the fruit clean and protected from the birds but we managed it. The only problem we had was to stop the vineyard workers from eating it all themselves.
The Riesling was hand-picked last Friday on a beautiful cool day. Again our Riesling is grown organically and un-irrigated on the Winsome vineyard. The vines were quite vigorous last year but this year they have behaved really well and the spur pruning that we use has lowered the yield to a nice 7 tonnes per hectare. The fruit showed the beginnings of a light botrytis infection which, with the dry harvest weather we have had, dried nicely into sweet raisins. The fruit was whole-bunch pressed and is awaiting a natural ferment.
All that remains of vintage are two more days of picking Sauvignon Blanc, another day for Merlot and Malbec Rose and finish off with a tiny harvest of Syrah.
Tags: Harvest News Huia, Harvest report, Marlborough, new zealand, Video