Ben Browett with Pinot Noir stalks
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Following my stint at Château Latour working on the 2011 harvest (and then a few months working as a sommelier at Chez Bruce), I headed off “down under” for the 2012 harvest in New Zealand. First stop is Auckland, where I am working at the prestigious Kumeu River Winery, widely regarded as New Zealand’s finest Chardonnay producer.
Situated 25km outside of Auckland, the Brajkovich family have been producing top quality Chardonnays here since the mid 1980s. The more recent addition of three single vineyard wines has resulted in worldwide acclaim and high ratings from independent critics.
I arrived on the Monday morning and was greeted by Michael Brajkovich, who was New Zealand’s first Master of Wine and is now in his 30th year as head winemaker here.
Partly due to a summer with below average levels of sunshine, the Chardonnay harvest would be slightly later than usual, with picking starting next week. This week would therefore be dedicated to getting the winery ready for the busiest period of the year (and picking and crushing some Pinot Noir in the meantime).
Barrels fresh off the boat from France
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It seemed I wasn’t the only one making the lengthy trip from Europe to New Zealand, as nearly 100 new oak barrels had just arrived from France. Consequently, my first job was unwrapping these before smelling them inside to check ‘toastiness’ and stacking them in the barrel cellar. The barrels are from a variety of different “tonneliers” as they all have their own distinct flavours and differing strengths.
Having sorted out the new barrels, we turned our attention to the first stage of the wine’s journey from the vine and started preparing the press and steel tanks. All fermentation for Kumeu Chardonnay wines takes place in barrel, however the juice is extracted and sent directly into steel tanks in order to settle first. I also spent some time labelling, as the winery is constantly receiving orders. However, different back labels are required by each customer, depending on which country the wine is heading to. As a result, most bottles are left unlabelled until their destination is known.
Labelling at Kumeu River
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In the first couple of days, all the Pinot Noir grapes were picked and brought into the winery. Forklifts lifted the grapes into a crusher and I helped clear all the stalks from the de-stemmer before the juice, skins and seeds were sent off straight into steel fermentation vats. As the juice is fermenting, the skins float to the top of the tank causing a ‘cap’. In order to oxygenate the juice and help absorb colour and flavour from the skins, we pumped the juice every day from the bottom of the tank back onto the skins.
"Pumping over"
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On Tuesday night, Bob Campbell MW was running a wine course at Kumeu River which involved a tour and tasting. Michael explained the family history of the winery (founded in 1944 by his grandfather) and the more recent history, such as in 2001 when the winery decided to bottle all their wines under screwcap. Michael brought out some unfermented Pinot Noir juice that I had helped press earlier that day. After trying this, we were then fortunate enough to go through the full range of Kumeu wines:
The Kumeu River range with a photo of Michael as a child with his late father Maté
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Next week we will start on the picking of the 2012 Chardonnay grapes....
