Vintage Reports

2020 Vintage Report: when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

Posted in Vintage Reports - Written by Nga Waka on June 5, 2020 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) I’ve always wanted to use a Hunter Thompson quote and the 2020 vintage presented the perfect opportunity with the impact of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown and social distancing requirements presenting some unique challenges and a distinctly different and weird normal for vintage. Turning to […]

2019 Vintage Report: frost depleted yields offset by high quality vintage

Posted in Uncategorized, Vintage Reports - Written by Nga Waka on January 31, 2020 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) A rather typical season in many respects with one glaring exception. A major advective (cold air mass) frost in October took out most of our largest vineyard, Pirinoa Block. The cold air mass settled to the South of Martinborough and around Te Muna while […]

2018 Vintage Report: warm season and early harvest beats out late rain

Posted in Vintage Reports - Written by Nga Waka on July 30, 2018 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) Unlike 2017, the numbers really do tell the story of the 2018 growing season and vintage. The early part of the season was unremarkable, slightly dryer than normal and next to no frost events. Flowering conditions were perfect and, in the absence of strong […]

2017 Vintage Report: lies, damned lies and statistics

Posted in Vintage Reports - Written by Nga Waka on September 19, 2017 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) Looking at the numbers above you might think the 2016-2017 season was slightly wetter and cooler than average but nothing too out of the ordinary and you would be dead wrong! Hence the old Mark Twain quote (attributed in the first instance to British […]

2016 Vintage Report: The Big Dry

Posted in Vintage Reports, Wine - Written by Nga Waka on August 8, 2016 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) After the small 2015 vintage we were hoping for a bounce-back to more normal yields in 2016. Frost was an issue again in Spring but the wind machines proved their worth and we sustained minor damage but only in our Pirinoa Block. Temperatures in […]

2015 Vintage Report: small but perfectly formed

Posted in Uncategorized, Vintage Reports, Wine - Written by Nga Waka on August 25, 2015 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) There’s always a danger with catch phrases like “small but perfectly formed” that somewhere in the past I’ve used it to describe a similar vintage. If I have, mea culpa! The “small” part of the equation was established during the first half of the […]

2014 Vintage Report: Perfect (by the skin of our teeth)

Posted in Vintage Reports, Wine - Written by Nga Waka on May 22, 2014 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) The two key statistics from the 2013-14 season are that we matched our earliest harvest date (24 March) and that the 2nd and 3rd weeks of April produced more rain than recorded for the entire month of April over the last 30 years. The […]

2013 Vintage Report: A Goldilocks Season

Posted in Vintage Reports - Written by Nga Waka on June 26, 2013 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) I will remember 2013 as a “Goldilocks” season and vintage – yields slightly above long-term averages and weather not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry (while we had an extended dry period a look at the monthly rainfall figures will […]

2012 Vintage Report

Posted in Vintage Reports, Wine - Written by Nga Waka on August 7, 2012 - 0 Comments

Growing season (Oct-Apr) data: Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) I’ve been scratching my head for some time trying to make sense of this season and I’m still largely clutching at straws to explain how the seasonal data above can have produced the quality of grapes, not outstanding but certainly good, solid quality, that […]

2011 Vintage Report – the season of weird

Posted in Vintage Reports, Wine - Written by Nga Waka on June 10, 2011 - 0 Comments

Rainfall (mm) Growing Degree Days (heat units) “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional” – Hunter S. Thompson. The season of weird got underway with a Spring devoid of frosts, the first for many years. Having finally installed a wind machine in the Home Block last year the frost gods had the […]

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