No 3 in the series Wineries of Hawke's Bay: Sacred Hill

They play it cool at Sacred Hill

Maybe they don't want people to visit? Well we were early, so the class tried to go to Roosters next door. 

Dejection - closed

But Heather came to the gate and let us in, and we were away on our magical tour...

The receival bin and must chiller

First, the obligatory Front End  - where every winery tour begins. Raining hard today as you can see.

Two presses, one tipper tank, efficient handling of grapes.

Sacred Hill process 1000-1500 tonnes of Hawke's Bay fruit through this site.

Red Cellar

Lots of smaller ferments which are subsequently assessed for blending.

Students ask 'which one's the Riflemans?'

Maybe it's over there?

Or in these arty looking tanks?

Two kinds of heater visible 

In the malo room - 18 degrees, to get the wines finished promptly

But who do they mean? Surely not The Silver Fox?

That would do your head in wouldn't it?

The inside spiral beater arm of a destemmer/crusher

And the perforated rotating drum it lives in. Nice pic, n'est-ce que pas?

Retirement time for old glycol pumps. Kick back guys, you've earned it...

And now - the tasting of Ti Point wines. Students liked Rose 2010, Unwooded chard '09, and merlot/cab franc '09.

Then over to Armourtech where we saw the STARS unit

STARS is the electrolytic removal of bitartrate ions to enable the cold stabilisation of wines without the protracted storage of wine at very low temperatures - cheaper ($0.08 per litre) than chilling, less capital intensive (if you hire Armourtech to do it rather than buying your own unit) and faster too. Hooray.
The day ended happily because Roosters was open so it was back there for a muffin and a debrief - and for some, a flagon of the new Weissbier (mmm, bananas and cloves).

All too familiar logo in these pages...