2009 Vineyard Report
Early finish to the 2009 Vintage at Blasted Church...
Another growing season at Blasted Church's 41 acre estate vineyard has come to an end. Post-harvest is a welcome time for the vineyard staff to start winterizing the plants and equipment and for the winery crew to continue their passion creating the wine we all love.
Currently in our winery the 2009 vintage is promising to be a fantastic year. Read on for the 2009 vineyard story.
A very cold 2008/2009 winter season greeted us forcing cold air damage across the vineyard. Our top block received most of the cold damage. We had at least 6 or 7 nights over the December and January period that were -15 degrees or lower which is the shutdown temperature for any young vines. We started harvest on the 16th of September, 2 weeks earlier than last year.
Due to the cold start to the year our yields were on the low side, but our sugars and flavours were right on target. We had a fantastic spring and summer growing season. Normally we would see sugars increase by 1 Brix a week, instead they bolted to 2 and 3 Brix a week just before harvest.
Our pruning season started in February. We made a lot of big cuts in the established Chardonnay to reset the training process. The vines had been left without cutting them back around the crown for a few years. 2 Canes VSP (vertical shoot positioning) was our plant training platform and we left 1 or 2 spare canes for spring frost damage to tie down.
Early April we had cutworm damage, appearing mostly in our Chardonnay which caused us to lose most of our primary buds. After all was said and done we ended up with some good grapes from our secondary buds. Pest and disease monitoring was carried out by all vineyard staff throughout the growing season. Shoot thinning was applied in most of the vineyard to insure that the plants with the most winter damage did not undergo much stress producing a canopy and fruit.
We traded in our old open station tractor for a new Kubota narrow tractor with a front-end loader attachment to help us with mixing and producing our own onsite compost from our grape pressings and added cattle manure. This blend will be added to the vineyard to increase the organic matter in the sandy soils, located on most of the vineyard. Taking these steps gets us closer to being more sustainable as a vineyard and winery.
August is the month when fruit starts veraison (ripening). Sugars increase, acid levels decrease, and berry colour changes are noticed. We kept a close eye on our crop levels ensuring that we could get the most from our plants and keep quality standards up. Bird control had to be stepped up from last year as a slight increase in damage was noticed. Wasp populations were down this year but a big increase of leafhopper was experienced.
As always, we harvested our 14 varieties of estate-grown fruit by hand. Fruit was picked based primarily on its flavour profile, and when sugar levels were to our winemaker's satisfaction. On September 16th we harvested our first fruit of the season; Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and top block Chardonnay. Next up was our Pinot Gris, Optima and Ehrenfelser. The majority of our fruit was into the winery and processed by the end of September.
Our last grapes came off on the 8th of October which was Cabernet Sauvignon. Compared to last year we were only halfway through harvest at the same time We finished just in time for Midnight Service with Ruthie Foster accompanied by great food, wine and atmosphere.
A big thank you to everyone involved in the office, vineyard, winery and contract growers alike.
Crop yields overall this season were at low levels both on our site and in Oliver. Fruit was really clean and healthy, and very little manual fruit sorting was necessary on our sorting equipment. Thank you to all for making my first full year vintage here at Blasted Church enjoyable.
Cheers!
Morton Serbon
Vineyard Manager