WINE IS GROWN ON THE VINE!

It may seem obvious but the quality of the wine that you drink depends on that of the grapes, which in turn is reliant on the way that they are grown. When it comes to making wine there is nothing more pertinent than the old maxim "rubbish in, rubbish out". Sure, you can start with perfect grapes and come out with junk because of faulty wine making. The reverse, however, does not hold true. Not even a magician can turn sad fruit into happy wine. That is why at Pegasus Bay we put a huge effort into our vineyard.

One of the basic rules of grape growing is that if you want to produce well coloured wines with intense ripe fruit flavours, mid palate concentration and richness, then you have to severely limit your crop. As this is the style of wine to which we generally aspire, we maintain a low yield per vine. A good example is pinot noir, which naturally has a tendency to produce big and often large crops. Our cropping level is often in the order of a tonne an acre and never more than two tonnes, whereas many others prefer to crop at four or more tonnes per acre. Bigger yields produce lighter colours and less weight. We achieve these low cropping levels by ruthless removal of excess bunches at veraison, which is when the berries start to change from green to red. Any bunches which are slow at changing colour are cut off and we also individually cull out green grapes from the remaining bunches. In addition, we make extensive use of Scott-Henry, which is a special type of trellissing system that allows more direct sunlight on the fruit and leaves and minimises shading. We pluck the leaves from around the bunches to really let the sunlight in and this process may have to be done three or four tiems in a season as leaves tend to regrow.

We also believe in sustainable viticultural management and organic techniques, so that we interfere with nature during the grape growing season as little as possible. Finally, we want to get the grapes to the winery in perfect condition and as quickly as possible after harvesting so that we make extensive use of hand picking. This is vital for the quality of wines, such as our chardonnay, in which whole bunches of grapes are gently pressed to avoid any hardness which can come from bruised grapes.

All this involves an incredible amount of time-consuming manual work in the vineyard. We could opt for a simpler and more commercial approach by using more mechanisation and allowing larger crops. It would not, however, get the desired result. And how is this achieved? Only by having a very large number of experienced and qualified vineyard staff. We employ 4-5 permanent staff and have over a dozen casual staff who are with us for most of the year. This is a huge investment in labour for our small size. We could not make the wines that we do without their dedication and expertise. Cheers to them.

CHARD-ONNAY BUBBLES OVER!

It was a warm mid-summer's day when the dragonflies skimmed lazily across the lake, the bullrushes nodded in the breeze and a glass of chardonnay was offered to the assembled multitude. Geoff Chard, renowned Australian opera singer, accompanied by John Pattinson on a very grand piano, starred in the fourth Pegasus Bay charity concert. The programme, which was appropriately based around the fruit of the vine, soared to great heights and this came very close to being literal. Towards the end, there was a sudden tempest which seemed to take all before it -- even Mr Chard! Singer, pianist and even grand piano looked in danger of doing a Mary Poppins, and the music would definitely now be in Auckland if the page turner had not nailed it down with her body. If not unruffled, Geoff Chard was undeterred and sung it out until the end. It was just the sort of dramatic ending that opera singers love!

PEGASUS PINOTS - WHEN TO DRINK

We often get enquiries about when our wines will be drinking at their best. The answer, of course, is any time prior to midnight, as after then the senses may become a little blurred. Seriously though, wines do gradually evolve in the bottle and take different times to reach their peaks. They then slowly start to fade. Fruity red wines often have a lot of tannin which gives them grip or firmness. This is felt particularly after swallowing. With time, these tannins soften, the wine becomes velvety and the flavours more focussed or defined. If this process is allowed to carry on too long, the aroma and taste begin to fall off so that even the softer tannins start to stick out, rather like the bones on a thin animal. The wine becomes skeletal or over the hill. How long this process takes varies from wine to wine. Fuller richer wines take much longer to evolve than lighter ones but generally end up much better. The speed is very individual and depends not only on what the wine is like initially but how it is cellared. There will thus be variation, depending on exactly who has aged it and where. None the less, certain generalisations can be made and, with this in mind, we recently tasted a line-up of Pegasus pinots to give you a feel of when they will be drinking at their best.

• 1991 - quite intense savoury and prune flavours, supple and soft but still muscular. Ready now but should continue to drink well over the next six years.
• 1992 - big bright wine, chewy and robust but not hard. Stacked with plummy flavours. Just ready for drinking but will happily last 3-8 years.
• 1993 - deep colours, stuffed with plums and cherries. Plump structure and fine balance of acids and tannin. Ready to drink but should last 5-10 years.
• 1994 - a fruity wine, good extract, but yet soft and velvety. Very attractive now and should last 4-8 years.
• 1995 - dense wine with ripe plum and nougat flavours. Plump, voluptuous and vibrant. Stacked with ripe tannins. A top wine which can be drunk now but will last 10-12 years.
• 1996 - bright colour, full of vibrant ripe berry fruit. Beautifully harmonious with a tightly knit structure. Drinking well now but will probably peak in 3-5 years and should last 15 years.

We hope these notes are useful and in further newsletters, other Pegasus Bay wines will be similarly reviewed.

Pegasus Bay Maestro Takes to the Sky

Recently we learned that Pegasus Bay 1994 Maestro had been selected to be served to first class passengers on Singapore Airlines. We were very surprised and delighted to receive this high flying international recognition, especially as we had not ourselves submitted the wine to the airline for evaluation.

OF NOBLE AND IGNOBLE ROT

While we are on the subject of labour-intensive work, let us tell you about the labour of love that is botrytis. Botrytis cinera is a naturally occurring fungus which can grow on a number of different fruits but which especially likes grapes. The spores actually attach themselves to the grape at or shortly after flowering but they do not start to grow until the berry is ripe. Given a little dampness and warmth at this time, the fungus grows within the grape, turning it soft and mushy. It also adds its own very special flavour.

What we hope for is a grape that shrivels and becomes like a raisin, concentrating the flavours, sugar and acid, in addition to adding that special elusive botrytic character, something like beeswax, honeysuckle and ripe stone fruits. What is needed for perfect botrytis development is dew or mist in the morning, followed by clear sunny days to dry out the fruit. This produces so-called noble rot or, as the French would say, pourriture noble,

In order to achieve a perfect result, grapes have to be left on the vines until late in the season, usually into May and occasionally into June. It is a very risky business. Rain at this time can turn the whole lot into a soggy rotten mess or so-called common rot. Should this secondarily become infected with bacteria, it can become thoroughly putrid and vinegary, which is known as vulgar rot.

Because not all berries become affected with botrytis at the same time, the process is always patchily spread throughout the vineyard and, in order to achieve the best result, teams of pickers have to harvest individual bunches or single berries when they are just at the right stage. They may have to go through the same patch of vineyard doing this on a number of occasions over several weeks. Not only does it involve an incredible amount of devoted labour, but the final volume of wine that is obtained is very much reduced due to the grapes being shrivelled. By and large, wineries do not recoup the full extra cost of making these wines. They are a labour of love!

Pegasus Bay Riesling has a small amount of botrytis which gives it an extra dimension and flavour. Aria, a late picked riesling, has substantially more botrytis. Finally, our Noble is made from heavily botrytic fruit. See if you can taste the difference.

FROM THE PRESCRIPTION PAD

There is nothing new under the sun -- like many popular sayings, this contains much more than a grain of truth. Take, for example, the recent discovery that wine is a health food and part of living a healthy lifestyle. It is clear from writings that this was known in ancient times and that up until recently, society has ignored millennia of accumulated wisdom on this topic. Greeks and Romans from the classical period used wines for a variety of medical purposes and sometimes as a vehicle for other medicines.

One recipe from that time, which called for testicles of an ass, ground fine, put in wine and drunk, sounds as though it would be enormously therapeutic. shakespeare's son-in-law, John Hall, a distinguished physician from Stratford-on-Avon, whose life features in the currently popular play, The Herbal Bed, included wine as part of his therapy. He described the patient whose problems included jaundice and saffron-like urine who was cured beyond the expectations of her friends with the concoction liberally laced with wine.

But perhaps you are not convinced. Let me give you another example. St Timothy, in the New Testament, says use no longer water but take a little wine for thy stomach's sake (Timothy 5:23).

Now, it has taken just on 2000 years and megabucks of research money to prove that this venerable gent knew exactly what he was talking about. In last December's British Medical Journal, a group of German doctors published an article showing that alcohol helps protect against stomach ulcers. They also found something that St Timothy didn't tell us, namely that coffee and smoking have the opposite effect: but then he would have had to do a "crystal ball" about these other dreadful toxins, which hadn't at that stage been discovered in his part of the world.

But the news about moderate wine drinking even gets better. This year in the medical journal Epidemiology the results of a French study are published. This looked at the health of 34,000 men who were followed up over a period of 10-15 years. Two to three glasses of wine daily reduced deaths from coronary and cardiovascular disease by 35% and two glasses of wine a day diminished deaths from cancer by 22%. On the whole, mortality from all causes was reduced by 30% by moderate amounts of wine but it increased when drinking above seven glass daily. A glass of wine was judged to contain 120mls.

Perhaps you have heard about the patient who asked his doctor, "Will I live longer if I give up drinking and sex?" "No," came the reply, "but it will seem like it." Well that doc got it wrong. The latest news hot off the medical press is that not only wine but also sex makes you live longer! Last December, a group of British doctors published in the British Medical Journal the results of a survey of a large number of people and found that sex had a protective effect against heart attacks. Put quite simply, those who had sex regularly reduced their risk of having a heart attack by about 50%. Whatever will these medicos come up with next? Think what powerful therapy it would be if combined with a glass or two of wine. But then, I guess the ancients probably knew about this considering all of those orgies and things that they used to hold. I will have to do some practical research and let you know!

Cheers, Ivan Donaldson