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...

 

Roosters HB Class Visit 2010 part 2

Most of the beer brewed at Roosters goes out to the trade in kegs

But a lot gets served at the brewery in a very pleasant atmosphere 

There is nobody here because it's Tuesday morning and nobody drinks at that time of day in Hastings (shhh!)

There is lovely food

Fancy a roll?

And a convivial bar




Chris tells the 'son of a hill country sheep farmer' story one more time. The ladies are hanging on his every word...

And most of the students filled a flagon to take away because...

Well, they are students...

Roosters HB Class Visit 2010 part 1

Here we are - Roosters Omahu Road Hastings

This is a class trip I arrange each year, after the students have learned enough about wine to appreciate the differences and similarities between brewing and winemaking. Chris Harrison does a great job communicating the story behind his choice to found Roosters in order to fund Beach House Wines.

Raw material - malted barley

Roasted to different toast levels

Malt is milled into the mash tun and water added

Hop flowers dried on the vine over the door

The wort is drained to the kettle and the mash dug out. Here's Darryl.

Here's the mash, off to the cows

So the raw materials - water and malted grain - mix together and the enzymes in the grain convert the carbohydrates in the grain into simple sugars, and then these are leached out into the hot water.

The kettle boils the wort, and hops are added

The boiling sterilises the wort, denatures the proteins so they can settle out and also extracts the aromatic and bittering components from the hops that are added. The hops are added early on for maximum extraction, though some styles of beer require a second, late hop addition to increase the aromatics in the beer - India Pale Ales and Pilsener are examples of a late-hopped style.

The wort is cooled as it is pumped into the fermenters, with yeast and oxygen

Heat is recovered from the wort by the plate heat exchanger, and returned to the water tank for tomorrows brew. The wort is reduced from 100 deg C to 15.

Fermenters, cooled to 15 deg C for lager, 22 deg for ale

Fermentation takes about a week, a little longer for the higher alcohol styles. Alcohol content is determined by the level of fermentable sugar in the wort, (like brix in grape juice) and can be increased by putting more malt into the mash tun at the beginning, or decreased by adding more water.

mmm, beer...

The ferment is quite vigorous, depending on the yeast and temperature.

Filter cleans up the green beer that has finished ferment and settled for a month in conditioning tanks

Diatomaceous Earth filter - also used for wine production. Clarifies the beer once it has sat for a month in the chiller tanks to settle and mature. This conditioning process is called Lagering but is not exclusive to lager styles.

Indevin HB class visit 2010

The tallest doors in the industry?

Wine Technology students were fortunate to visit Indevin last week - the biggest winery you've never heard of in Hawke's Bay. 4500 tonnes is a pretty good throughput, and the ability to handle it takes a lot of nice shiny toys and a purpose built facility now in its fourth year of operation.The winery is contracted to process Hawke's Bay fruit for Delegats winery, at least until they build their own facility, which may or may not be within about three years. (The economy being what it is, I don't think I'd put money on it, nor the previously rumoured replacement for Vidals, any more that the Springboks retaining the World Cup just at the moment).

There should always be a receival area in any winery photo portfolio

Unlike the Marlborough Indevin, the receival area for Indevin HB needs only one crusher, although it feeds three presses to ensure flexibility and the ability to achieve maximum efficiency of grape input.

Three presses - one fills, one presses, one empties

The mixed intake - 50:50 red and white, 70% of the whites being chardonnay, makes the intake regime quite different to the heavily sauvignon focussed Marlborough wineries of equivalent size. Harvest is more evenly spread out and demand on the intake front end is less that it might be at say, Oyster Bay Marlborough.

Nothing like some shiny tanks

lovely catwalks too

Red wine tanks have built-in pumps for automated pumpovers - finished ferments are drained, skins dug out to bins, then loaded onto the conveyor visible in the third pic to load the presses. Quite manual compared with the tipper tanks and rotary fermenters on at Corbans HB - in the interests of gentle handling?

spaghetti filter

Big investment in up-to-date equipment - $300,000+ for this CrossFlow filter, 8 modules of spaghetti filter elements at $12000 replacement. Each. So don't block them...

Ball valve

Red tanks feature ball valves to allow must to be pumped over without blocking.

Butterfly valve

Butterfly is more hygienic for long term storage as no wine is trapped within the valve when it is closed...

Gluhwein - a popular Winter item sold at the Farmers' Market and now, as lambs and daffodils are here, I'm thinking only a couple of weeks left before we move to the warm weather and look ahead to going outside again. 

 

Gluhwein is traditional in colder European climates for after work or play - warmed wine, sugar, citrus and spices. The Sanderson version comes from the times I worked in Alsace in France  and the Rheingau in Germany. I have happy memories of  the harvest fair in Hocheim, and a visit to Riquewihr, where gluhwein, and hot macaroon biscuits, and roast chestnuts, warmed us up on a very cold day. It isn't as cold in New Zealand, but we can still appreciate the experience...

Hawke's Bay Winery visits - the first in a series...

Outside. Can you see the Elephant?

Elephant Hill Winery, Te Awanga, Winter 2010

Cuves full of shadows

Just a drain, but such a pleasing one

Arty underground cellar shot

Lobe pump excitement. 

Arty press ladder shot (looking vertically up)

More shiny things

QR code for minimalists - or the ceiling in the restaurant

Students doing research

Thanks Elephant Hill - -we had a great morning and enjoyed the opportunity to spend a relaxed 90 minutes chatting with the Cellarmaster about wide ranging  topics...