At the moment Soon and Rene are doing the 2nd fruit thin (3rd for the clone 5). Really need to get it done while moon still ascending and newish. It's easiest done about 1/2 veraison (colour change). There's a lot of variation this year. Some of which we've evened out already. Now it's mainly evening out between plants. Taking out that10% green grape that might otherwise be picked and slow down ripening of the others. If you're statistically minded, its taking out the left hand 10% of the bell shaped curve and then waiting for that bell shaped curve to modify itself over the next 6 weeks so things ripen together. 10% isn't much this year we've got about 12 bunches per vine. So just a tidy up really. With resulting 70g bunches, we should get .75kg/plant which'll give us 5t/Ha. That's enough numbers for today
The guys are also taking off some of the older leaves to open up the canopy a bit more. We don't put on any botryticides so need to keep it open. Fortunately fairly open already and not too many laterals or second set this year.
Actually I lied, here's some more numbers:
Some people use this phenological growth stage to get the numbers to match up. Match up to what? Burgundy appellations.
Grand Cru is less than 35HL/Ha or ~5.4t/Ha
Premier Cru is less than 45HL/Ha or ~6.9t/Ha
And these are from vineyards planted at 8000+ vines/Ha (supposedly). At max grand cru production (assuming no distilling for over production) this leads to about 2/3 kg/plant. In the nouveau world (well at least in central otago) good practice is to shoot thin to 10 shoots/m. If this was the case in Burgundy and they fruit thinned to 1 bunch/shoot that'd mean 65 g bunches. That doesn't happen too often. So they leave less buds at pruning and therefore less shoots etc. Then Monsieur Mildew and bot do their bit and a fair bit gets selected out at harvest. Which is best practice?
The rules for the appellations were pretty much set about 100 years ago. Big knowledge improvements since then. However the soils have most likely got worse during that time (and beforehand) and probably couldn't sustain the gains from technology.
Central Otago soils are light but young and give it their all. Who knows what they should produce. Recently someone suggested to me quality was directly proportional to yield (per Ha). This means a straight line relation between the two ie 1 t/Ha is 5x better than 5t/Ha. I don't think the average drinker could discern this (actually this is proven fact) but maybe judges and writers can to a little extent. Maybe not exactly linearly but if you're judged the best in the world maybe your price can go up x fold too.
Something I often ask myself is why does t/Ha matter so much anyway. What about kg/m, g/bunch or g/berry? and why is 8000+ vines/Ha good? I'll answer that when I think I know.
Ian
