As we approach harvest and the grapes go through veraison, they don’t only get attractive to us humans. In the last weeks before harvest, the hard, green grape berries become juicy and tasty. The red grape varieties gain colour and the white varieties soften. The sugar content goes up, and the berries double in weight. And everybody wants a taste.
Even our vineyard dog, Rosie, has a pretty good palate and would start eating low-hanging fruit once they’re ripe enough, acting like she’s the Chief Maturity Sampling Technician or something. But we’re not worried about Rosie and the bunches she munches.
It’s the birds. Unless they are stopped, birds would destroy the harvest.
The larger birds such as blackbirds and thrushes that steal a berry and fly off with it don’t really bother us too much. It’s the tiny ones, the sparrows and wax-eyes, that cause the trouble. They peck a hole in one berry and then flit off to another bunch to do the same, and then another… And in each of these places, rot sets in, mostly sour rot, that would essentially turn the wine we make from such bunches into vinegar. And nobody wants to relax with a glass of vinegar.
We try to scare off the birds by making noise in the vineyard, but the most effective way to stop them is to put nets over the vine rows. They can find food somewhere else – the grapes are for us!
Working on the taste
In the weeks before the nets go up, we do a lot of work to make sure the grapes are as tasty as possible.
A big thing for us is to get the crop loads right, so that we get the quality wine we want. Our vineyard team goes through the vine rows to get an accurate estimate of the crop they carry. There’s a lot of counting. We even have a smart little app that lets you take a photo of the bunch, and it counts the berries and grades them into large/medium/small berries. Using mathematical models, we get a sense of the eventual crop load and can then compare it to what we know gives us the wine quality we want.
This often means we have to remove some of the bunches – we’d rather have a smaller crop of better grapes that ensure you can enjoy tastier wine.
If only the birds would develop a taste for the unripe fruit that falls to the ground at this stage and leave the ripe grapes to us. But no, they love a sweet, juicy grape as much as we do.
The simple truth of it is that if it weren’t for the nets, we wouldn’t be able to make the wine you love.
If you’re feeling a bit parched on a hot summer’s day, just imagine how thirsty the vines can get when they stand out in the hot Marlborough sun day in and day out. On the face of it, the idea of withholding irrigation from them seems downright cruel.
But it’s exactly what our Marlborough viticulturists are doing. Not out of cruelty (they love their vines), but with the twin objectives of saving water and improving our wine.
“We believe people may have traditionally over-watered the vines,” says David Bullivant, Marlborough Area Viticultural Manager for Babich. That is why Babich volunteered our vineyards for a trial run by NZ Winegrowers. This placed Babich at the forefront of this research in New Zealand.
What happens in most of the New Zealand wine industry is that viticulturists measure the moisture in the soil, and then when the levels get too low, they irrigate – mostly by drip irrigation delivered near the foot of each vine.
“We’ve become much smarter with this over the years,” says David. “On most vineyards, they would irrigate long and deep if the soil has good water-holding capacity, for instance clay soils. Where the soils are more stoney and free draining, we need to water small amounts and often, otherwise the water simply drains right through the soil profile.”
However, he believes further improvements are possible.
One of the breakthroughs is not to measure the water in the soil, but in the vine itself. Using a device they call the “pressure bomb”, our viticulturists measure the pressure of water in the vine, a bit like measuring someone’s blood pressure. This gives a more accurate indication of the level of water stress the plant experiences.
During the ongoing irrigation trials, the trial area only received irrigation when the water pressure in the vine dropped below given thresholds. In the 2018/19 season, this meant that the vines in the trial received less than 50% as much water as their neighbours, who were watered using current industry standards.
“This had a number of impressive benefits,” says David. “For one thing, we saved a lot of water.”
This is great for someone like David who is passionate about our natural resources – water preservation in itself, but also benefiting aquatic life and giving Kiwis the opportunity to enjoy our waterways more.
“This is something of a crusade for me,” admits David.
“In terms of managing the vineyard, we also saved cost, as the drier parts of the vineyard had fewer weeds we had to control. As for the vines, we didn’t have to crop-thin or leaf pluck as much.”
The eventual crop load was higher than from neighbouring vine rows, the berries were smaller and sweeter.
“Our winemakers preferred the wines from the drier vine rows, especially the Pinot Noir. Our senior winemaker, Adam Hazeldine, said the wines from the drier rows showed more density, plushness and complexity.”
After two years, the trial results point at the possibility to do dry farming, i.e. not irrigate at all.
“We’re not there yet and it may not be suitable for all sites, but it is something we definitely want to try at some of our Babich vineyard blocks in future. With less irrigation, there is more incentive for root development. With better root systems, the vine is able to find water further afield. It makes them more robust, able to better withstand the droughts we experience in Marlborough. At the same time, it creates opportunities for the vines to pick up minerals that can be reflected as extra complexity in the eventual wines.”
So, when you feel like a drop in a year or so, the Babich wine you choose may be even more flavourful than what we have now!
After making wine for more than 100 years, like we have at Babich, you get a different perspective. You take a longer view. Of course, we think about the wine we’ll make from the coming 2020 harvest, but we also think beyond that, to the wine we’ll be making in 10, 50, or 100 years. We want to make sure that the sixth generation of the Babich family will inherit healthy vineyards capable of growing grapes for their wines.
As chief winemaker Adam Hazeldine puts it, “You can’t keep pushing the land year after year and expect to keep getting the same quality from it.”
For our future wines to be as good as they can be, we need to make sure that our vineyards are fully sustainable, and the world we live in as sustainable as we can make it.
Simply put, you have to give back. Pay it forward, as we like to say. Invest now in our future… and the future pleasure of all those who enjoy Babich wines.
We’ve achieved part of our goal already – all our vineyards are certified sustainable by Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand. In fact, our Fernhill vineyard was one of the first in the country to achieve this status, back in the 1980s. Ten years ago, we became an accredited member of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand. This means that 100% of our grapes and all of our winemaking facilities are sustainably accredited.
But sustainability is not a goal you reach or a box you tick, it’s a journey. We raise the bar year after year, always looking for ways to be more sustainable. By adding more gear to our tractors, we can perform more actions on a single pass past the vineyard rows – saving fuel and minimising soil compaction.
In our Hawke’s Bay vineyards, we haven’t used any glyphosate weed killer since early 2017 – something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Some of our Marlborough vineyards have also achieved this milestone, while others are nearly there.
Our Headwaters vineyard in Marlborough is fully organic. This is a direction we’ll keep exploring.
“You can always do more and better,” says Adam. “It’s about us being kaitiaki, guardians of the land, and also about maintaining our ability to make great wines. Ultimately, sustainable winemaking delivers results you can see in the vineyard and taste in the glass.”
So, next time you enjoy some Babich wine, remember to raise a glass to the land!
