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With the Autumn already starting to show itself with the grape harvest just around the corner, we were blessed with a glorious sunny day for the Wairarapa Wines Harvest Festival. With bands playing all day, local restaurants providing samplers of their wares, and of course local wines to be sampled, it was a great day out.

The small town of Martinborough is certainly the most famous for wine in the Wairarapa province, and as they had had their own event ‘Toast Martinborough’ back in November, so this is mainly about the wines from the rest of the region. That’s not to say they weren’t represented at all though - and the Hudson Winery certainly brought some flair to the event!

Due to the heat, I stuck to white for most of the day, starting at Jo Ryan’s where I finally had a chance to try his wines - after me and a group of friends helped him picking some Chardonnay the week before! These turned out to be some of my favourite wines of the day - the Joseph Ryan 2007 Sauvignon is a beautiful fresh style with appealing fruit of citrus, a great refresher to ease me into things, but the wines got better from there!

The Joseph Ryan 2007 Pinot Gris has an awesome nose, with loads going on without being too busy - almonds, stone fruits and some pear. The palate is pleasingly refreshing, with more almond cake and light fruit.

It was the Joseph Ryan 2006 Riesling that I opted to take home with me though - and if I was staying in New Zealand for longer, I’d have bought some to cellar, because with plenty of acidity giving the wine backbone, this will be drinking really well in 3-5 years. The nose is fairly restrained, with some green apple and a touch of wax, but it’s on the palate that it really explodes. Zingy vibrant lime, with honeysuckle and some developed flavours leaving a richer more rustic finish - as well as the acidity, which lingers on.

I did eventually plunge into some reds - all Pinots! and my favourite (of the few that I tried - towards the end of the afternoon…) was the 3 Terraces Pinot Noir 2006. Which had some lovely creamy character a bit like Brie on the nose, and had nice balanced fruit and decent length. A good example of the style that comes out of the region.

This was the second year the Harvest festival and while no one can guarantee the weather for next year - I’d highly recommend it as a day out!

I just thought I’d stick up a quick note to mark the occasion…

Wow - 10,000 hits! It’s nice to know people are reading my meanderings - and not just my friends and family, I’m pretty certain I don’t know that many people!

I am now just over halfway into my year in the Southern hemisphere, and what a lot I have done in the first 6 months! I have stayed in a mud hut in Africa, gone walkabout in the Australian bush, bungy jumped (twice!) and of course met winemakers and sampled wines in some of the most prestigious wine regions in the world..

Thanks to all of you for dropping by and following my journey, and sticking with me when my writing goes through dry spells.. but I have loads more to write about, what with another 3 months here in New Zealand, and then a couple of months travel through South America on my way back to Wales…

Tonight, to celebrate breaking the 10,000 barrier I am opening a bottle of the newly released Matahiwi Hawkes Bay Unwooded Chardonnay 2007.

I was keen to give this particular wine a try as today I spent the last hour or so of my day packing bottles off to New Zealand’s wine press for review, so I thought I’d get the scoop on them and review it on here! From what I’ve heard, this is the first commercial wine that Virgil, the Assistant winemaker here at Matahiwi has ever made from start to finish, so your reputation is on the line Virgil!

The nose is fresh with some grapefruit citrus and chalky mineral freshness. On the palate, it has rounder fruit than the nose would suggest, with baked apple as well as citrus flavours, leading to more mineral zing on the finish. Very nice, a zesty white ideal as a summer refresher - one to convert a few Sauvignon drinkers back to Chardonnay, proof that Chardonnay doesn’t always need oak.

With the netting of the vines completed yesterday, and an extra day in the year - the timing was perfect for today’s Golf day - spending the day out in the scorching sun was far more enjoyable thanks to the beers periodically dropped off to us from golf buggies, I can only sympathise with anyone attempting to play golf back at home at the moment!

It has been a great day, with teams entered from all sorts of local businesses - and a great way to get to know some of the guys from Matahiwi a bit better, even if my golf game still leaves a lot to be desired!

The grapes are well on the way to ripeness, with the Pinot Noir lovely and dark, and the Sauvignon blanc turning a lighter shade of green, the skins almost transparent.. After the last of the bird nets went on first thing yesterday, we spent the remainder of the day, first sewing up holes in the nets, and then going through the reserve Pinot block removing any bunches that were lagging behind in ripening, which will also push all the vines efforts over the coming weeks into the remaining grapes.

The other big news in the winery this week is that the drought in the Wairarapa province is starting to bite - our bore has dried up! and the vintage is only weeks away, when the winery is going to need enormous quantities of drinking-quality water. At the moment the rough guesstimates are that we’ll need a tanker of water brought in each day once we get started! Apparently wineries will generally use 7 litres of water for each litre of wine they produce - I didn’t realise it was so water intensive - but with all the rinsing of tanks, vats, pipes and other equipment, it soon adds up!

Fresh from my tour of New Zealand’s South Island, I have arrived at Matahiwi Estate just as the Pinot Noir grapes are starting ‘veraison’ turning from hard unripe green to dark red. Unfortunately this change attracts hoards of birds intent on stripping the vines of this ripening fruit. As I have heard from many a wine maker: ‘Great wine is made in the vineyard’ - but no wine will get made at all if the birds eat all the grapes!
So my first job in the vineyard, where I will be working for the next few weeks until I’m needed in the winery, was to join the team putting nets over the vines.

Pulling the nets from the reel behind a tractor is hard physical work! Who would have thought that something so full of holes would be so heavy! I’ve already started to feel the burn, so I won’t need to join a gym while I’m in town!

The main threat are the flocks of starlings (- a British import) which can strip whole rows of vines bare of grapes in a matter of days! Once the nets are on though they shouldn’t hang around too long, and then just the odd crafty thrush and magpie will make it into the nets through any tears they can find.

Pinot Noir is really what it’s all about here at Matahiwi, and it’s been interesting to see how the blocks vary around the vineyard - with over 40 different combinations of Pinot clone and root stocks, the grapes have different bunch set and are ripening at different rates. It will be interesting to see how they all develop over the coming weeks.

After my non-stop dash around the South Island, I have now arrived in Masterton - once again, my timing is tight - giving myself just a day to get settled into my new house before starting at Matahiwi Estate on Monday…

My house - another arranged-before-I-got-here from Gumtree.com has seen me land on my feet once again! I’m sharing with Victoria, a trainee nurse and Matt, a journo for the local paper and the house is great! With the added bonus of a pool, shared with the neighbours - a perfect place to cool off after spending the day in the hot sun out among the vines.

Masterton itself, the main town in the Wairarapa province seems to have plenty going on, one week in and already I’ve been to a toga party, and have just spent the day in Wellington with Victoria’s brother in law, watching England get beaten by the NZ black-caps in a one-dayer at the ‘cake-tin’ (aka. the Westpac stadium - usually the home to the Welligton Hurricanes rugby club).

My trusty steed ‘ZeeZee’ is getting a bit more rest nowadays too - just a short drive out of town to work, which happens to be right over the road from famous NZ film director Peter Jackson’s house - which is more like a mansion from what I hear, with it’s own hobbit-holes, moated castle, and railway (yes, a full-size railway!)

Have I had much wine since I got here? Well actually there was a rather yummy bottle of 1992 Palliser Estate Botrytis Late Harvest Riesling in Belinda’s stash at her toga party, which had a lovely developed character of brown sugar and baked apples along with a nice tang of acidity - although this is purely from memory - which was a bit shakey the next morning!