As of September 1 a whole new layer of compliance has been added to the burden. A requirement of the Wine Act 2003 is that all wineries must submit a “Wine Standards Management Plan” to the New Zealand Food Safety Authority. The NZ Wine Institute did go to bat for winegrowers when this piece of heavy-handed bureaucracy was mooted to try and convince them how unnecessary it is for winegrowers, but to little avail.
The Food Safety Authority is motivated almost wholly by the need to avoid the contamination of food. As we have seen in recent years this has become a major issue through the apparently growing prevalence of many nasty biological agents which can cause severe illness. But wine, whilst technically a food, is totally “safe” from biological contaminants - its alcohol is enough to kill any microbial life likely to be a health threat.
We are henceforth obliged to establish and maintain data recording systems in excessive detail. Again the Wine Institute has come to our assistance by developing a standardized Code of Practice. But this requires comprehensive documentation of much of our grape growing activity and all of our winemaking operation.
When we have put together our plan a “Verifier” spends a day or so at our premises, entirely at our cost, checking our set up and all of our records against the plan to ensure that we are doing exactly what the plan says. It is not entirely clear how often we have to get “verified” or what happens if the verifier finds inconsistency between practice and plan. But one thing for certain is that it will involve more time and expense for the winegrower.
It is highly unlikely that winegrowers who already live or die according to the quality – “safety” if you like, of their product, are going to do anything they are not already doing to improve their practice as a result of this.
The thinking behind this sort of bureaucracy is that producers cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and the consumer has to be protected by Nanny State against these rogues. Winegrowers who value their integrity and are proud of their product may justifiably feel insulted by this new imposition, not to mention aggrieved by the additional time wasting and cost it requires.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, September 2008
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( 3 / 363 )This is the time of year when the hard work is over, we can stop muttering darkly at the sky and indulge some finer sentiments about wine. One enduring idea is the relationship between art, thought and wine, and wine’s apparent role in inspiring poets, artists, musicians and writers down through the ages. Following are a few ideas about the marvel that is wine, elegantly expressed by some thinkers and artists and ranging in time from about 2500 years ago, to the present:
Where there is no wine, love perishes, and everything else that is pleasant to man. Euripides (484 – 407 BC), Greek playwright.
Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine has ever been granted by the gods to man.
Plato, (427 – 347 BC), Greek philosopher.
Without good wine, spring is not spring for me. Hafiz, (1325 – 1389), Persian poet.
Wine…one sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight beyond the bliss of dreams. John Milton (1608 – 1674), English poet.
Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil and… opens a new world, when this, the present, palls. Lord Byron, (1788 – 1824), English poet.
…good wine, well drunk, can lend majesty to the human spirit. M.F.K. Fisher (1908 – 1992), American writer.
Music is a psychological landscape, with all sorts of indefinable things. Wine is the same way. It has tastes that are very hard to define. When I drink a great wine, I get a sense of breadth – it’s like a chord sounding and echoing. Michael Tilson Thomas, Symphony Conductor.
My idea of heaven is to sit in a favourite restaurant with cheese and a glass of wine. Wendy Wasserstein, American playwright.
Some of these thoughts are perhaps a little overstated – poets after all are inclined to be lyrical, but there is a nub of wisdom and truth in all of them. So it is appropriate to give the last word to Pliny, Roman Scholar and Writer, who, around the time of Christ, coined the still famous aphorism in vino veritas – in wine, truth.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, August 2008
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( 3 / 380 )A number of research studies in the last 20 years or so have linked health benefits with moderate wine consumption. Most of these have focused on the anti-oxidant qualities of red wine in particular, with positive effects for inhibiting cancers, vascular disease, diabetes and other “lifestyle” conditions. A study conducted at Harvard Medical School in 2006 found that a compound in the skins of grapes called resveratrol was closely associated with these effects.
More recently a large-scale study in Scandinavia aimed at isolating environmental and genetic risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis, found that those who consumed alcohol regularly had a significantly lower risk of developing the disease.
Many of these studies have been epidemiological in nature. That is, they look at the health effects on populations – statistical effects, rather than health effects within individuals. In studies of this kind it can be difficult to isolate and evaluate all of the population characteristics which can contribute to the findings. But the sheer persistence and repetitive nature of “wine-friendly” research findings does make one wonder….
Another recent piece of research, this one from the US and not about health, looked at whether there is a link between the price people pay for wine and their enjoyment of it. This study was based upon a large sample of people doing blind tasting, so that they did not know what wine they were drinking. The sample contained both “expert” wine drinkers (those who had had some sort of training in wine appreciation), and “non-experts”. The findings showed that the non-experts tended to enjoy cheaper wines slightly more than expensive ones, while the experts preferred the more expensive wines.
I am prepared to bet that “the sugar effect” played a significant role in producing these findings. A good deal of wine is bottled these days with a little residual grape sugar, in order to broaden its appeal to the wider “non-expert” population, in a world awash with sugary beverages and foods. Because of the market these wines are produced for, they are made in large volumes and are generally cheaper. Most “experts” probably continue to prefer wines which are made in a more traditional dry style, with all of the grape sugar fermented out, because they complement food better. These wines are often made in smaller batches, with more care and attention both in the vineyard and winery, all of which makes them more expensive to produce.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, July 2008
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( 3 / 380 )In Matakana we have had a number of vintages characterized by a long lead-in period of settled weather, 2005 most recently, but before that, coincidentally all of the even-numbered years going back to 1994 featured more or less settled weather. While these conditions produce uniformly excellent grapes across all varieties and all vineyards, unsettled weather can cause problems.
There have been equal numbers of unsettled-weather vintages, and 2008 was one of those. But this year seemed different from most of the unsettled, uneven-numbered years going back from 2003 to1995.
When it is considered that Matakana is in reality a small geographical area, the extent of the variability in 2008 seems to have been quite marked. In our own vineyard we decided not to pick one of our red varieties because of weather-induced problems with the fruit, while most other reds were very good and the whites were as good as any of our previous 12 vintages, both in quality and ripeness as well as quantity.
The opposite of this pattern was experienced by some of our winegrower colleagues, which might seem strange. But there is a logic behind these apparent inconsistencies. A number of factors, including minor weather variations within the region during the immediate pre-harvest period, differing resistance between varieties to inclement conditions, slightly varying ripening times for different varieties and clones of varieties, and of course the effect of different vineyards and viticultural practices, all play a part.
That such a large combination of variables would produce such apparently inconsistent results should be no surprise.
So you can be sure that while not everything was great this year, we will again see some excellent Matakana wines from 2008. The one thing we all shared in common was a good deal of warm, dry and settled weather, especially in January and March. So those who were relatively unscathed by some of the intervening weather will be feeling pretty good right now about what they have in tank and barrel from vintage 2008.
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters June 2008
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( 3 / 384 )Vintage in Matakana is now in full swing. Teams of grape pickers are sweeping across the hillsides snipping the season’s bounty from the vines, which is then collected by tractors and trailers carting the overflowing bins of luscious sweet grapes to the winery, where the bunches may be further sorted before being juiced and then pumped away to fermenting tanks.
But how do we decide when the vintage starts? In order to maximize wine quality the grapes need to have reached a certain level of development on the vine. This is determined by a set of precise measurements and observations. When you have been growing wine grapes for a while, you get a reasonably accurate idea from taste alone, of when they are ready for winemaking. Grapes are very palatable to eat some weeks before this, but at this stage respective levels of sugar and acid will make a rather thin and sour wine, with a low level of alcohol.
Taste alone is not generally good enough. The when-to-pick decision for most of us is made after we have collected a sample of grapes, examined the pips and stems, juiced the fruit, measured the sugar level, either by refractometer or hydrometer, measured the pH, then measured the level of acidity using a laboratory process called titration, which involves progressively adding an alkaline solution to the juice until it raises the pH to a particular level. The amount of alkali added is the measure of how much acid is in the fruit. In popular mythology the sugar level or “brix” is considered the key determinant, but getting the acid down is just as critical as getting the sugar up, possibly more so with red wines.
It is particularly important that the test sample is thoroughly representative of the area to be picked, because not every bunch or every berry within a bunch is at the same level of development. Some are well exposed to the sun and will be advanced in their ripeness, while others will be partially or fully shaded by leaves, and others will be in rows near shelter belts which may mean they receive less sun and will be less ripe. So the criterion for picking is the average ripeness of the complete area to be picked.
When to pick may be complicated by what the weather is doing or has done in the recent past, so for example significant rain events around this time can cause consternation and gnashing of teeth. And after the picking decision is taken the winemaker immediately has a range of other issues to consider and decisions to make, but that is another subject…..
Robin Ransom
President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.
robin@ransomwines.co.nz
Originally published in Mahurangi Matters, April 2008
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