Scenic mountain view from the vineyard

A sneaky peak at the 2019 vintage!

Here is an update on the 2019 vintage from the winemaker at TE MOTU, one of our favourite vineyards..

Harvest is underway, and it’s looking like Vintage 2019 could be one of the greats! (I say as I hurriedly look for some wood to touch). As we all know things can change overnight depending on what Mother Nature has in store – however, we can confidently say that Waiheke’s had the best start to vintage us wine industry folk could hope for. Spring weather conditions were mild allowing an even fruit set and a sizeable crop. From there the summer of ‘19 set in. Hot dry sunny days turned into hot dry sunny weeks and months.

My home veggie patch has dried up, and the rainwater tank is critically low, but the perfect summer conditions have allowed concentrated ripening in our grapes to accelerate – putting smiles on the faces of winemakers and viticulturists all over the island.

Here at Te Motu many of our later ripening reds are still a couple weeks from picking. However, we’ve already hand picked our juicy, sweet and concentrated Malbec, and have made a start bringing in our fast ripening blocks of Merlot.

From this point our job will be to keep monitoring the development of the remaining grapes in the field, keep the vineyard in pristine condition, and be ready to pull the trigger soon as each varietal reaches optimal ripeness and let the fun begin in the winery.

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