So Francisco, you're well into the harvest, how are you bearing up?

Well we’ve finished all the Merlot and we’re on our way to finishing a large proportion of the Cabernet too. Next week (21st April) will be the rest of the Cabernet and the Shiraz. But it’s been interesting. What happened was at the beginning of March the temperature increased a lot and the ripening was happening really fast. Then in the middle of the month the temperature dropped and it was suddenly all cloudy. So this fast ripening was suddenly delayed. So what I thought would be a really early vintage was now moving later and we were delaying picking. Then in April the temperatures rose again and the ripening began to accelerate.

It’s been good though. There’s been no rain really. It’s not been a problem for us for over eight weeks. There might be a little rain on Sunday in the south, but if it comes it will just be light and not a big issue. In the end, water is the key to quality. If you cannot control the water in the soil then you have a bad terroir. For us we want water in December and January then have it dry in the early part of the New Year. That way you stay in control using irrigation and you can stress the vines more for better fruit.

You mentioned last time that timing was less critical with Chardonnay that Sauvignon – just talk us through that

What I think is that as a winemaker with Chardonnay you have a bit more room. I mean, it depends on the style. If you want a fresher style or a riper style, there are more other ways of influencing the winemaking to achieve that with Chardonnay. With Sauvignon you have to pick at the right time though. And also with Chardonnay people are looking not only for primary flavours, as you are with Sauvignon. And remember, here we’re not making a Sauvignon Blanc like you’d find in parts of France with oak. Here in Stainless Steel, Sauvignon is less forgiving.

I know that ‘wild yeast’ fermentations are something you’ve had success with. What influence so they have?

In 2002 we had been very successful with wild yeasts. It was one of my favourite wines. Because when you use selected yeasts you use only one strain of yeast. But different strains of yeast bring out different flavours. If you use the native yeasts that live on the grape to ferment your wine you have two, three, maybe five different strains. You have a bigger pool of micro-organisms, each one producing different compounds, so you are getting a bigger pool of compounds in the wine.

Now there is another side. Selected yeasts are chosen because they have a selected resistance to Sulphur Dioxide and alcohol. Wild yeasts stress more when there is sulphur dioxide and there is much higher mortality of the yeast cells. This leads to more volatile acidity – vinegary aromas. But that also means that there is more complexity. So if you are clever you have a wine that is… how shall I say this… dirty, but in a good way. Aromas of onion and yeast that add to the complexity.

Now when you start harvesting red varieties what additional things do you have to consider over sugar and acid levels in the grapes?

In whites you are especially interested in the primary aromas of the fruit. In reds what I look at is tannins… and I mean the maturity of the tannins, and I do that by looking at the skin condition of the grape. You have to try the skins. Taste it. Feel in your mouth whether it’s too leathery. Now it depends on the grape variety. Merlot has quite a leathery skin – it should feel hard to break. Cabernet has more of a tendency to disappear in the mouth when you chew it and it is ripe.

You also want to assess the colour. Chew the skin and spit a little out into your hand to assess it. And look at the seeds. Are they brown with translucent juice around them and no excess of green flavours. And as the grapes mature you find they go dry, then more grainy and at the end soft and round.

I know it’s a bit of a side issue, but we hear about how tannin structure is one of those big differences between the style people like in the US and the UK – what’s your feeling there?

In the end it all has to do with personal taste. I don’t like an excess of extract, dryness or power. I try to moderate that and also moderate greenness in my wines. But it’s true. In the UK people want wines with fruit intensity. But you know I try not to have a style that is only attractive to one market. Thank to the intensity of fruit in our grapes we have wines that are very good for the UK market. And when we are in the winery we are able to adjust the other features like oak level that you can play with.

And how do you assess these things?

Well, you taste and you do an analysis of the grape. We assess the skins according to an ‘index of anthocyanins’ that gives a measure of the colour of the grapes. But we also chew them and spit them. It’s not a fancy thing this but you chew the grape skins in your mouth to break up the cell walls in the skins and spit them out. You can then look at the colour depth. Is it deep? Is it bright? Is it red?

But to this you can also add the measurement of colour levels. This gives you a number that gives you an indication of quality. Anthocyanin levels – the thing you are measuring – are at their maximum level before the tannins are ripe. They go down after this peak as the tannins approach maturity. So we measure these levels very closely, maybe twice a week, as the drop in anthocyanins, the drop in that number, is an indication of tannin ripeness.

Is there a big difference to the red grape harvest and the white grape harvest?

In some ways it’s the same. We use small cases for the Reserve wines and the Icon wines and larger cases for the varietal wines. The differences are more when you get to the winery. There we sort the grapes before they go into the crusher-destemmer. And at that point we remove all leaves and bad bunches. Then, after the grapes have been through the destemmer, we have another sorting. This time a berry selection that allows us to remove all the stems, green items and all the little green berries that go through the first sorting table hidden in the bunches.

We also use this second table to eliminate ‘raisins’ in the bunch. These are those that have been exposed to extra sun in the ‘shoulder’ of the bunch and so have shrivelled in the heat. And we take those away as they can give over-ripe flavours and cooked aromas. You mentioned last time that this is a stressful time – with stuck fermentations and so on – tell us more about that.



Probably the biggest stress in the cellar during vintage is a wine that has stopped fermenting. It means that the wine is still sugary, very unstable and can re-ferment. If this happens in the winery it always has an impact on quality – there’s always a slight effect. So it’s important to pay attention so that you don’t have to referment, which is what we do. Usually for us it’s not a big problem, maybe one to two lots per year, which is very small. The key is to pay lots of attention to the whole process. Most of the time it’s your own fault when this happens. You have to pay particular attention to temperature – especially reds, especially to Cabernet.

One mistake people make is to measure the must but not the cap. The cap of skins in the tank can go way higher than the must underneath and then it starts to kill the yeast with the heat. It can be 32 – 34 in the must but over 35 in the cap. So you need to pumpover the must onto the cap. Most do this twice a day – we may do three or four pumpovers, and each time put the thermometer into the cap to check the temperature, not just the juice.

But also I tend to ferment at high temperatures at the beginning of a fermentation and then diminish the temperature later as the alcohol increases – that’s when the yeasts are more sensitive. And we do a lot of work with the microscope too. We check the populations of yeast at the end of the fermentation and know what a ‘normal’ population and ‘low’ population will look like. If we’re getting a ‘low’ population then we can put in place measures like more nutrients or oxygen to help the yeast.

I suppose also we have to check that our malo-lactic fermentation doesn’t start too early. This is something we want to encourage in our red wines, but if it starts early, before the alcoholic fermentation has begun, then it will compete with the yeasts for nutrients in the must and that can have an impact.

Sure. It’s a stressful time and there’s a lot to do. But we have it under control and we work together as a team.

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