Truffles & Farm

The purple fingers of oblivion

/ Gareth

The purple fingers are from the wine we bottled today: 22.5 cases of Faultline pinot noir and 11.5 cases of Côtes du Waipara syrah, oblivion a warm place under a duvet in the near future. The bottling was done by hand, which means with a syphon into the barrel of wine (racked off its lees), into bottles which were corked by hand (using a wonderful old, slightly rickety, machine with a big lever on top), capsules heat-shrunk on to the tops, and then packed into cases. I took the siphon station, hence the purple fingers — which are now more black than red as oxidation runs its course. The wine now has to rest for at least six weeks to recover from the shock of bottling, and will improve further with time. If I can resist the temptation…

Yesterday we harvested the 2010 pinot vintage: about a barrel’s worth, as last year. The depredations of birds accounted for at least the same again — cue much discussion about improvements to netting for next year, focusing on the use of contrivances designed to push the nets out and away from the bunches of grapes so that the birds can’t just push their beaks through to the fruit. It’s far too early to say how good this year’s wine will be, but I have to be down at Waipara West by 9am in the morning to process the fruit through a de-stemmer and into a fermenter. Then it’ll be regular visits to plunge the caps. Rob the winemaker will make sure nothing goes wrong.

Thanks to all our friends who helped over the two days, especially Barry & Sue who did both days, Peter, Richard, jet-lagged Charles, Scott and Camille’s aged parent Norman, who picked through the cold drizzle and demolished the pig(*) with great relish, and Julie who arrived in time for the pig and stayed to help with the bottling. Your collective company made working a pleasure.

(*): Being a half a shoulder of pork, boned and rolled with the skin on, treated with a dry rub of Louisiana spices (paprika, cumin, chilli, cayenne, pepper & salt, brown sugar, etc: recipe originally nicked from Trevor in London at least 15 years ago, and now a family favourite), then roasted in a low oven for at least three hours (preferably longer — I usually use the Webber BBQ and some mesquite chips, but it was a bit wet for that), served with a sweet and sour garlic sauce (simplicity: vinegar, brown sugar, lots of garlic boiled together), baked kumara (Pacific sweet potato), and a green salad. Not forgetting some substantial wine — it needs to be to deal with the robust flavours of the pork. Barry brought a meaty Aussie GSM, which was more than up to the task.

Wine update: grapes nearly ready…

/ Gareth

The 2010 grape harvest is getting closer: the grapes are ripening well, and we’re aiming to pick them on Easter Sunday. Time to muster friends and family and offer them a good feed… This year the wine is being made by our neighbours at Waipara West, and I’ll be helping out by doing some of the plunging. The ’09s will be going into the bottle the following day, and these are the latest versions of the labels I’ve designed. Nothing will be available for two to three months, because the wine has to rest a while after bottling. Should be ready just in time for the truffle season…

Marlborough’s first truffle

/ Gareth

Hysonsfirst1.jpg

This is the first truffle of the 2010 New Zealand season, the first ever found in the Marlborough region, and a first for Marlborough grower Michael Hyson and his Waihopai Valley truffière. It’s nowhere near ripe yet, but as Michael exclaimed when he rang me with his news yesterday morning, “Gareth, it’s huge!”. And it is at least big — that scale is in centimetres, so the top of the truffle is about 7 cm across. The very slight reddish tinge to the surface is typical of immature melanosporum, and Michael reports that the flesh (seen through a nick in the skin) is still white. That skin damage and the fact that it has grown out of the soil surface means the chances of it surviving through to full ripeness (probably late June/early July — around three months) are poor, but where there’s a big one, there’s almost certainly more. The Hyson family’s trees are eight years old. I hope their success is echoed in other young truffieres around the country in the coming season.

I also have my fingers firmly crossed for this year’s harvest at Limestone Hills. At the beginning of the week I was pretty certain that I’d found a couple of “push ups” — where the soil surface cracks open as a truffle grows rapidly underneath — but I resisted the temptation to check on progress because one slip with the trowel, and the truffles might never ripen.

Truffle dogs and Chinese truffles (but not Chinese truffle dogs)

/ Gareth / 3 Comments

Since we’re in catching up mode, here a couple of articles I’ve been meaning to make available for some time. The first is a paper [PDF] on Chinese truffles commissioned by Gastronomica (the prestigious US food and culture journal) in 2008, which draws heavily on my experiences in China in 2007. It discusses the impact of Chinese truffles on the world truffle market, and the prospects for the future.

Admirers of Peg the beagle (and dog lovers in general) will enjoy this six page feature [PDF] from New Zealand’s Pet magazine (issue 47, June-August 2009). The truffle hound’s on fine form, but please ignore the pictures of her boss. Jean-Paul Pochin did a great job on the words and pictures.

Second wine: 2009 syrah & pinot to be bottled soon

/ Gareth

Stunning, that’s what Nicholas said. The winemaker, that is, about our first syrah. Quite made my day, I can tell you. I tasted a barrel sample today, and I have to say I thought it was pretty good — though naturally I’m biased. The pinot’s not bad either: a lot more colour and complexity than last year’s first effort. We’ll be bottling both wines in about a month — we should have about 25 cases of pinot and 12 of syrah. Some may be available for sale, but I’ve no idea of prices yet.

The 2010 grapes are looking good under their nets. It’s a been a warm, dry summer so far, and I’m expecting a slightly bigger crop than last year, but with good concentration. Now that we’re moving into late summer and early autumn, all we need is some of those long dry weeks Waipara’s famous for…

Christmas, wishes

/ Gareth / 2 Comments

Boxing Day, and hangdog shame strikes. No updates to On The Farm since April. Plenty of effort at the other place, but naught here since the pinot harvest (which went well, thanks to help from friends). We have a barrel of pinot and a half barrel of syrah to bottle in a couple of months time. Nick the winemaker, pushed by me to give me some idea of the quality of the wine, said that if it had come from his vineyard he’d be pleased. So… we wait. Might have some to sell.

Bad year for truffles. Nothing at Limestone Hills or our neighbours in Waikari — a poor season in Canterbury generally, brought on (my theory) by a marked drop in temperature in mid-February. Add to that an early start to winter (I picked the syrah in May, with snow on the grapes), and I think there just wasn’t enough heat over late summer and autumn to get the truffles going. Fingers firmly crossed for this year.

And so, as we drift towards a new year, there is (as usual) a lot for me to do on the farm, cleaning up the trees and getting the irrigation system primed for any dry spell, plus shoot thinning and sulphur spraying in the vineyard. I’ll be on RNZ National’s Summer Report (morning news show) at 7-50am on New Years Day, talking truffles, and I’ll be duty Sciblogger on Noelle McCarthy’s morning show at about 10-30am on Jan 6th. Then there’s the new book. I need to spend more time writing it. Finishing it. Publishing it. If all goes to plan (ha!), then I’ll post a draft of the introduction and first chapter here before the end of January. But don’t hold your collective breath…

And, before I forget, nadolig llawen!

Time of the season

/ Gareth

I ride the farm bike (four wheels, a buggered exhaust so it roars rather than purrs) round the vineyard several times a day at the moment, in the hope that this will deter voracious avian thieves from feasting on my crop. Last year, they reduced a tonne to 300kg, but this year (fingers duly crossed) a number of large vineyards down the valley seem to be intent on providing fodder, and so the flocks of starlings and waxeyes haven’t yet come this far upstream. And if they do, I have a shotgun waiting. To scare them, of course, though four and twenty blackbirds might very well make a nice pie. A lot of feathers to pluck, though. We have also acquired a pheasant in the vineyard to go with the quail that parade across our lawn. I haven’t got the heart to shoot either…

Grape news: We plan to bottle The Faultline’s first vintage this weekend, and harvest the next the following week. The pinot will be first, with the syrah a week or ten days later. Meanwhile, Peg’s nose is going to start hunting for Burgundy truffles, and I will be checking for saffron milk caps at regular intervals (none yet – but we have had some very nice birch boletes from my father-in-law’s lawn and a giant puffball from a grassy bank in Rangiora).

Book news: Hot Topic has made the shortlist for the Royal Society of New Zealand’s first Science Book Prize. Richard Dawkins will announce the winner at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival on May 15th. I have many minor appendages crossed.

Guilt, and Google

/ Gareth

The guilt part is that the other place has been taking up all my blogging, and OTF has suffered. So here’s a quick update, stimulated by yesterday’s gadget acquisition. I was fiddling around in Google Maps, and there — lo and behold — it appears that Google’s Street View is already available for Ram Paddock Road. It’s not that long since Street View was announced over here, and I had assumed it was mainly a thing of the cities and towns, but it appears they’ve been thorough. You can look over the garden fence and see the pond, admire the big gum, and — here’s a surprise — see nets on the vines. The Google bus must have driven past about a year ago, because we haven’t got the nets on yet (it’ll be a couple of weeks, at least). Feel free to be nosey.

Meanwhile, we’ve been having another hot La Niña summer. Our unheated pool has been up to 30C, and the air a good deal warmer. Irrigation is being used to the full. The grapes are looking good, the truffière’s being watered, and once again I bless the decision (made a decade ago) to buy a large fridge that dispenses ice and chilled water out of the freezer door.

And finally, because new gadgets are fun, if you visit OTF from an iPhone, you will be greeted by a special phone-friendly theme, courtesy of the excellent wptouch plugin.

First wine: The Faultline Pinot Noir in the barrel

/ Gareth / 1 Comment

Friday was a big day. I took some friends of ours up to the Daniel Schuster winery (well worth a visit by anyone passing through Waipara), and we were able to taste a barrel sample of Limestone Hills’ first wine (thanks Tom and Marie). A big moment. Nervous, moi? A little, perhaps, so don’t expect analytical tasting notes. After six months in the barrel (there’s only one), it’s a very pleasing tipple. Elegant, I’d say, with a good complex nose. Delicate, not a big, dark blockbuster. I’m biased, of course, but it’s a wine I’ll be very happy to drink on a regular basis. Should be bottled before next year’s harvest, and we’ll have 11 or 12 cases to put in the shed that passes for a cellar. I don’t plan to sell any, but bottles will be available for friends and anyone dining with us will probably get more of it than they really want. I’ll have more detailed tasting notes after bottling.

The name’s based on the geology of the vineyard. A large active fault cuts across it, dividing the solid limestone that underlies the farmhouse and cottage from the more rubbly, but still lime-rich subsoil beneath the main truffiere. I have all summer to design a label…