Vintage 2010
I thought I would give everyone a 'snap-shot' of how things progressed in the winery after a very eventful vintage.
As a winemaker, waiting for vintage to start in earnest is always a nervous time. Waiting for flavour development in late March we quickly concluded that it was going to be a somewhat condensed harvest. However, the weather 'gods' worked their magic and a staggered ripening pattern across the district allowed for a relaxed and controlled harvest.
In the winery it has been noted that this vintage was one of the most 'laid back' on record. I guess the combination of fewer tonnes, a fantastic team of people and well embedded systems, allowed the fruit and juice to flow successfully into our fermentation tanks. We definitely had some of the cleanest and tastiest juice to hit our fermentation tanks in years.
So how do the wines look for 2010? Tasting through the tanks, we were really impressed with the quality of the vintage. The 'quality bar' was set high from last year, but a definite gain has been made.
The Stoneleigh and Stoneleigh Rapaura Series Sauvignon Blanc both look fantastic, showing concentration and strong regional flavours. They’re showing some great intensity of flavours and big aromas – watch this space.
Both of the Pinot Noirs have been drained off their skins and are off to barrel. They are showing more colour and fruit vibrancy than last year, but it's still a bit early to judge.
The Pinot Gris and Riesling have just finished and are in the process of being tasted and blended.
Vintage 2009
To view or download a short video of Stoneleigh winemaker, Jamie Marfell's thoughts on the 2009 Stoneleigh vintage, click a link below.
Windows Media Viewer video (5.4MB .wmv)
The Stoneleigh vineyards 2008/2009 growing season got off to a good start with moisture reserves in the soil back to 100% after good winter rainfall. Warm and dry conditions in spring provided the perfect environment for bud burst and settled weather over flowering allowed an excellent fruit set.
The summer started superbly with great growing conditions over Christmas and into January. February saw significant rainfall that refreshed the canopy and set the vines up well for the crucial ripening period. The sunny weather returned in March and so began a long Indian summer. The weather was so good in fact that we were able to hang the grapes on the vine for an extra five to seven days, increasing the flavour concentration significantly and enabling all of our harvest decisions to be made solely on the basis of grape ripeness. At no stage were we pressured into picking due to the threat of inclement weather.
Looking at the results in our tanks and barrels from the 2009 vintage, we can now see that the wet February extended our growing season, and in the Stoneleigh wines we see greater intensity of aroma and flavour due to this additional hang time.
Stoneleigh lies on the northern edge of the Wairau Plains, on an old course of the Wairau River. The river has deposited round stones over a wide area, many of which now lie on the surface. It is these sunstones that make Stoneleigh wine so distinctive. They absorb the heat of the sun during the day and radiate it onto the vines and grapes at night. “What the slightly warmer nights do for the fruit flavours is it tends to push us out of the green flavours into some of the riper flavours,” says Jamie.
Pinot Noir as a variety is particularly sensitive to the terroir where it was grown. Compared to Pinot Noir from other parts, Stoneleigh Pinot Noir is delicate and fragrant, with bright red fruit flavours.
The warmer nights also mean that Stoneleigh is normally one of the first vineyards in Marlborough to start harvesting table wine.
The first grapes from the Stoneleigh vineyard were harvested slightly later than normal on 28th March, but were still one to two weeks earlier than other parts of Marlborough. “The flavour profiles are showing beautiful intensity of flavour as well as retaining some lovely acidity,” says Jamie.
Vintage 2008
This vintage, Stoneleigh have not only profited from one of the warmest and driest New Zealand summers on record, but have also had the boon of timely rain around Christmas. “For us, the rain has been wonderful,” says Jamie Marfell, Stoneleigh winemaker. “Because we have such a high stone content in our soil, it tends to hold less water than the clay soils elsewhere in Marlborough. We need a certain amount of rainfall to keep the vines vibrant, green and lush, so we get beautiful grapes with lovely fruit flavours." He says vine health at Stoneleigh is the best he has seen for three to five years.
“In Sauvignon Blanc, we tend to be hitting the high notes in things like passionfruit and grapefruit rather than the capsicums, cut grass, the green characters. The flavour profile of Stoneleigh wines tends to be riper.”
This year, the first grapes from the Stoneleigh vineyard were harvested on 20 March, two weeks earlier than some other parts of Marlborough. “My prediction for this year after tasting the fruit is it’s probably one of the better vintages we’ve had for the last four or five years,” reports Jamie.
With a vintage as good as this, the Stoneleigh wines from 2008 are bound to be exceptional.
