Last years very low yield has created a slight shortage of our Sauvignon Blanc. This year, we are glad to pick wonderful ripe fruit with lovely tropical flavours and a hint of grapefruit. Although when looking at the green grapes you wouldn’t expect that ripeness… But we have reached high sugar levels maintaining a refreshing acidity level.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year !!!
We are closed on the 25th of December and on the 1st and 2nd of January.
We are open from 26th to 31st December and then again from 3rd of January 2013.
Manawatu Home Show
20 – 22 July 2012
Steven Bates (vineyard manager, pictured above) and the team from Johner Estate will be offering a delicious range of tastings (generous as always!) at stand number 542.
We have a superb ‘Special Tasting Experience’ which you won’t want to miss and all sorts of other surprises at the event including customised cases and a super Pinot Noir offer. We will look forward to seeing you there!
Of course if you cannot make it along to the Home Show in Palmerston North, we would love to see you at Johner Estate Vineyard where you will be sure of a fun and informative tasting hour…. or two!
Do contact us if there is any further information you would like regarding the Manawatu Home Show or Johner Estate.
Phone: 06 370 8217
Wellington Food Show
11 – 13 May 2012
Karl Johner, Steven Bates and the team from Johner Estate will be offering a delicious range of tastings (generous as always!) at stand number 304.
This year, we are proud to have Stefan, a Master of Wine (MW) student to introduce the wines to you.
We have a superb ‘Special Tasting Experience’ which you won’t want to miss and all sorts of other surprises at the event including customized cases and a super Pinot Noir offer. We will look forward to seeing you there!
Of course if you cannot make it along to the Food Show in Wellington, Rosalie would love to see you at Johner Estate Vineyard where you will be sure of a fun and informative tasting hour…. or two!
Do contact us if there is any further information you would like regarding the Wellington Food Show or Johner Estate.
Phone: 06 370 8217
The year has been cooler and more difficult than in other years. The real challenge is getting in ripe grapes with flavours and structure.
The most important aspect is picking out the ripe grapes by hand and then sorting them in the vineyard, before they are dropped into the bucket. As we also pick our late harvest noble grapes at a later stage from the same vineyard, no machine harvester can substitute our hard working pickers. The Sauvignon Blanc grapes couldn’t quite reach our desired ripeness levels of pure tropical fruit flavours. The grapes were too fragile to leave them longer outside, as the Botrytis was starting to spread out. So we just picked the best ones out by hand. These grapes have nice flavours of gooseberry, grapefruit and sometimes peaches. As you can imagine, the crop is smaller, and we will have a shortage of Sauvignon Blanc. We will see if we are able to produce a Sauvignon Blanc Ouvertüre (our Primeur for the German market) … but probably not…
We have also been busy picking Pinot Noir. A part of it has been pressed off as a Blanc de Noir and will be bottled as a Methode Traditionelle.
We are also proud to be able to pick wonderful ripe Reserve Pinot Noir.
During redwine fermentation, where the juice ferments together with the skins, tannins and colour are extracted from the skins. Unfortunately the fermentation gases raise the skins so they float on top, and are not leeched out by the fermenting juice. So intense punch down is needed to mix up the skins with the juice. The total time on skins ranges between 2 and 4 weeks depending on the wine.
The quality from this very cool year is surprisingly good with dark flavours, intense colours and a great structure on the palate.
If you are interested in what it tastes like, please just visit us during harvest and we can give you a sample to taste.
As the harvest ends in about 2 weeks time, the first ferments show results beyond expectation.
On the 30th of March 2012, we started our harvest. The first grapes picked were from St. Martin Vineyards from Martinborough. Perfect ripe Chardonnay grapes at sugar levels of around 12,7 % vol alc. for our Methode Traditionelle. Some very ripe berries even had sugar levels up to 26 Brix.
Nick Blampied-Lane from Cloudy Bay visited us the other day and tasted our Pinot Noir for his big worldwide Pinot Noir tasting event held at Cloudy Bay.
He also brought his camera and filmed us.
Our interview starts at 2.00 minutes.
Martinborough Visit from Cloudy Bay on Vimeo.
It is definitely a sign that the Harvest is over when you see the nets being rolled up and then checked for holes. The team at Joner are sharpening up their sewing skills and armed with string & a nifty finger knife they are onto the next job, net mending.
A pleasant task when the sun is out but now the mornings are getting very chilly you can imagine they do not enjoy this stationary work in the cold. Today is a lovely sunny day so there are smiles all around.
It appears that there are more holes then usual as with the higher rainfall over Harvest and the diligent watering done prior, the growth was a lot more than other years. As the nets were removed the team had to carefully pull the foliage off the nets as tractor was winding them in. Now the job is to check & mend the nets before storing, so all will be ready when the time comes to put the nets on again. It is good to see that both the men & women are working together on this and we notice that one of the team has the prime spot sitting on the tractor!!
CALLING ALL LOVERS OF FINE WINES………
The biggest annual wine event of the calendar is on again!
The Wellington Food show is the weekend of the 27/28/29 May and is once again held at the Westpac Stadium (or caketin as it is less formally known!)
STAND No. 133
We at Johner Estate are very excited at the prospect of showing our many friends our latest vintages.
Please don’t forget that you will be able to sample these from our truly fabulous european wine glasses which we specially import from Germany in order that you have the finest tasting experience.
Here is the list of wines, we will be showing…
2010 Sauvignon Blanc Sur Lie
2010 Sauvignon Blanc
2010 Pinot Gris Wairarapa
2010 Rose Wairarapa
2009 MOONLIGHT Pinot Noir
2008 Pinot Noir Gladstone
2007 Pinot Noir Gladstone “Reserve”
2009 Pinot Noir Gladstone “Reserve”
2009 Cabernet Merlot & Malbec Wairarapa
2009 Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot Lyndor Wairarapa
2009 Noble Pinot Noir Gladstone Dessert wine
2009 Noble Sauvignon Blanc Gladstone Dessert Wine
So, all that remains to be said, is, we look forward to seeing you at the Wellington Food show, look for the Johner stand in its usual place, its always easy to identify by the crowds around it listening avidly to winemaker and owner Karl Johner as he shares his passion and knowledge of wine with those stopping in and of course we always look forward to meeting you and putting names to faces!
SEE YOU
Kind regards
The Johner sales team
Unofficial end to Harvest!
Karl put together for 14 of the staff a very exciting and informative evening. We have here at Johner quite an international line up of staff, with Kiwis, Germans, Swiss & French!
Karl gathered together 14 different Pinot Noirs to give us all the opportunity to gain an overview of Pinot Noirs. They were Wairarapa Wines except for two which came from Central Otago. This tasting was conducted as a blind tasting and of recently released 2009 Pinot Noir wines.
Karl kept the bottles covered as we tasted the wines. 14 glasses of Pinot Noir wine certainly looked very impressive as we arrived at our delightful cellar door. At this blind tasting everyone gave points out of 20 and then had to vote for the overall winner.
Interesting enough the most positive comments were awarded to Escarpment, but for Karl the Ata Rangi Pinot was top notch. The tasting panel showed quite a preference to Te Muna Road Pinot Noir.
In this tasting the wines were revealed according to the most liked which meant that the Air NZ Trophy winner & the top grade wines from Matthew Dukes and Tyson Stellzer got revealed reasonably late in the proceedings! Our own Johner wines were quite a favourite for the French due to their more European approach. It was good to see our Pinots averaged in the middle of preference overall.
This research was carried out in a very professional manner and we were very fortunate to have had this opportunity to smell, taste and see the differences between the Pinots. All in all they are not too far apart from each other!
