| Posted: 16.04.2010 | ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The 2010 growing season was definitely not one for sissies. A cold, wet spring was characterised by gale force winds and viticulturally we had to be on top or our game after 300mm of rain was recorded from September through to November. Although the threat of fungus disease and mildew was high, we managed to steer our crop through the resulting minefield without any problems.
The wind, however, was another story. Elgin is not known for its strong South Easters, but this past November a freak version of this wind hit us when some of the grape varieties were in blossom. In my 37 years of farming at Oak Valley, I have not known an Easterly wind to blow with this intensity, and the main victim was the mountain Pinot Noir block which lost half of its crop.
The ancient oak trees on the farm are conditioned to gale force North Westerlies, but this ferocious wind, coming from the opposite direction, took down whole oaks and ripped branches off others. The weather gods were certainly as angry as they ever have been this past spring!
Farming is definitely a game for survivors and when the summer eventually arrived we were pleased to find out that the damage, was not too serious, with the exception of the Pinot Noir block, as well as a South East facing Sauvignon vineyard (which ironically had been so sited to give protection from the Westerlies). We ended up being 15% down on our original crop estimate for the 2010 vintage, a pretty good result when listening to other reports from around the wine industry.
The wines continue to perform well in both tastings and in the market place, although the strong Rand is having a depressing effect on margins.
At the end of February, our Sauvignon was chosen to participate in the Aylesbury Sauvignon Blanc festival in Constantia. As a maximum of 5 wines was permitted per producer, we elected to do a vertical tasting of the past five vintages of the Oak Valley Sauvignon’s. The end result was excellent as it clearly demonstrated the ageing potential of Elgin Sauvignon Blanc and some journalists went so far as to comment on this in subsequent articles. In my view, we are releasing our Sauvignons too early, but there will have to be a big swing in market perception (especially on the local market) for us to run the risk of holding back these wines, not to mention the cash flow consequences. Encouragingly, a growing list of high-end restaurant customers are taking an alternate view to the market belief and are insisting on older vintages for their wine lists.
The 2008 “OV” Sauvignon / Semillon Blend is developing well in the bottle and will continue to do so for some years. Made from grapes harvested from a single vineyard block (our best fruit) located at 500 metres above sea level, and blended with 40% Semillon also from our mountain vineyards, the latter of which was barrel fermented naturally for 9 months in second and third full barrels, this wine is more complex than the straight Sauvignon Blanc with a broader mouth feel. The wine continues to achieve listings at top local restaurants, but it is not made in sufficient quantities to target export markets.
The “sold out” signs are up for the Oak Valley Chardonnay as a result of the permanent listing achieved with the Swedish monopoly, Symstembolaget in November, so much so that we have had to rush the release of our 2009 vintage ahead of the planned launch date, which would have been around mid year. In an ideal world, we would love to have more of this wine, as it is basically pre-sold prior to bottling and this for a cultivar where our best advice at the outset was to move cautiously with Chardonnay, as the market had turned against the variety due to the broad consumer reaction against overwooding.
The Oak Valley Pinot Noir 2008 has continued to score well in awards programmes. The latest result was gold at the Santam Classic, to go with the gold at the Mondial du Pinot Noir in Switzerland, as well as the Diamond Award for winemaker, Pieter Visser at the Winemakers Choice competition.This wine is a fruit driven example of Pinot, but like the previous Oak Valley vintages, the classical forest floor characteristics are starting to develop. Like our Chardonnay, we wish we had much more volume of this wine to offer to the market.
The Oak Valley Blend 2005 was selected as one of the FIFA wines for the 2010 World Cup, and we are pleased at the way the wine is drinking now with enough ripe tannins around to allow the wine to develop for a good few years. The 2006 is waiting in the wings for the market, but we are happy to accept a later release in order to give the wine more time to develop in the bottle. We made the mistake of releasing both our 2004 and 2005 Blends too early – put this down in part to over eagerness from new entrants to the wine business, but also to the fact that the 2004 won the International Trophy at the 2007 Decanter World Wine Awards in London, which caused sales to move much faster than anticipated, precipitating an earlier release for its successor.
Oak Valley is never a boring place, and we have just played host for the third year in a row to the ABSA Cape Epic with its 1200 bikers from around the world organised into teams of two cyclists per team. The race is televised across 155 countries, and we were pleasantly surprised when a group of Swiss visitors came directly to the farm after landing in SA, having followed the race on television back at home. Every year the Epic becomes more professional, and with it the organisers attention to detail is progressively allowing for improvements to an already world class act.
Our son, Christopher is now finally ensconced at Adelaide University in Australia doing the Master of Wine Business degree and is already relaying quality advice centred on analyses of the different wine markets of the world, interspersed with multiple tastings of Australia’s best!
Last Sunday, the 11th April, my brother James, organised a memorial cricket match on the Oak Valley cricket field in memory of the life of Ross Gower, our friend and winemaking colleague from Elgin. The match was played between a Franschhoek eleven and an Elgin invitational eleven featuring Ross’s sons, Robbie, James and Doug. The result was an equitable draw, but the day went on until long after sunset on a classical warm, windfree Autumn day in the Cape. The consensus was that this should become an annual event on the Elgin calendar and in this way Ross’s memory will live on into the future.
Anthony Rawbone-Viljoen
15th April 2010
