The heart and soul of any vineyard operation are the people who are there every day, rain or shine, doing the work that needs to be done to keep the vineyard in pristine condition. At Twelfth Night, we are extremely fortunate to have an amazing group of people from all over the world working under the watchful eye of our Vineyard Manager, Julien Alexandre and our Seasonal Staff Supervisor, Miran Park This multi-cultural, multi-lingual crew work together to coax the best possible fruit from our vineyard in Central Otago. In late January, Twelfth Night Wine's Director, Beth Ann Dahan spent a week in the region to see first hand the amazing work that the crew is doing.
While there, Beth Ann witnessed the main activity of the month - installing bird netting over the entire vineyard. New Zealand is famous for thriving native and non-native bird populations. These hungry birds can devastate a vineyard in less than a day if ripe fruit isn't netted. Most vineyards in Central Otago begin netting either just before the onset of ripening or veraison. On a 25 hectare (60 acre) vineyard like Twelfth Night's, this is a massive undertaking and requires all hands on deck to apply the netting with a net winder machine and then clip all of the nets so that they don't blow away. The video below show how this process works with the intrepid Julien standing on top of the net winder.
Another important task this time of year is to monitor the bunch weights of the grapes in the vineyard. At least once a week, Antony Worch, our winemaker goes through every block in the vineyard selecting bunches of grapes to weigh. This process will help to predict the total yield at process. Antony explains this process below.
After all that hard work putting on bird nets in the hot summer sun, the crew enjoyed some end-of-shift beers and snacks. Looking forward to the next trip to New Zealand at harvest in April!
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