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| Heinie Nel, viticulturist at Bosman Family Vineyards |
The
growing season started off quite good. Our rainfall in the previous year (2011)
was 537 mm and during this year (2012) we measured 727 mm of rain. We started
off with good soil moisture and enough water for the growing season. Our own
little "Hurricane Sandy" struck from November 28 - 30 2012. We had
wind speed of up to 110 km/h, the average being 65 km/h. Many of the shoots and
leaves in the vineyards were lost and damaged. The vineyards never recovered
fully and immediately after the wind, we had maximum temperatures of 39°C -
42°C. Fortunately there was very little sunburn damage, but at this time we
were all starting to become a little negative about the season.
Things
did shift to become more favorable during the second half of December and the
first half of January when temperatures were cool which is perfect for
veraison.
Most of
the cultivars were estimated to be about ten days later than normal except for
Pinotage and Viognier which was estimated to be 5-6 days earlier.
We do sugar loading on the red cultivars to
determine this. Sugar loading is when we take 100 berries, weight them and test
its sugar. All measurements are plotted on a graph and when it stops ascending,
you know the grapes are starting to reach full ripeness. For example, we normally harvest the Shiraz on 25-26 ° Balling, but with sugar loading we established that we already achieve full ripeness on 24 ° Balling. During the tasting of these wines we had very positive results. We will continue with this practice to see whether we can harvest grapes at lower sugar levels and still reach optimum ripeness.
Source Bosman Family Vineyards Autumn 2013 (May) Newsletter
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