Johner Estate

Sandra weeding

At Johner Estate we are proud of our Herbicide Free status as we know, in this day and age, it is always preferable to reduce or eliminate harsh chemical usage in any situation, especially large scale usage on farm, orchards and vineyards. This is another example of our hands on approach to vineyard management allowing us closer monitoring of the vines whilst manually dealing with weeds. Yes manually! Above is a photo of Sandra grubbing out weeds amongst the young pinot noir vines with a specially designed and rather scary looking hoe. Of course the whole vineyard is far too large to always weed by hand and the older vine rows are treated to tractor powered under vine weeding, rotary harrowing and cultivating. This approach has the combined benefit of dealing with the weeds, crushing them and ripping them out whilst also reducing the root run of the vines. Next time you visit Johner Estate I would recommend taking a closer look at the vineyard itself and please do ask questions of the tasting room staff as they will be happy to help.

The vineyard is alive with the beautiful soft green glow of fresh new growth! It’s the perfect time of year to instigate our vine replanting program replacing any vines throughout the vineyard that have succumbed over the last season. Sandra, Steven and the team are very busy planting approximately 1700 new grafted Pinot Noir clones which arrived just last week from our suppliers, having been cool stored and then soaked to bring them out of winter hibernation. Johner Estate is densely planted, this being one of our signatures of quality, ensuring vines strive to reach the high flavour concentrations Karl Johner desires. The procedure with new planting is as follows. Firstly Steven and Moritz mark the location of new vines (with flourescent orange spray paint!), Dale uses a digger to create the holes, Robert improves the holes by hand and Sandra, Christin and Friderike follow planting the vines tenderly amongst soil (rocks are removed). The new vines are staked, secured and enclosed with a plastic vine guard creating a protected moist environment in which they will thrive. Steven is regularly watering the new vines to help them establish in what is proving to be a glorious warm spring.

Congratulations to James Morton of Auckland on his recent win of a bottle of Cabernet & Merlot ‘Lyndor’ 2009. James entered our monthly competition by adding his name to our email database and will now receive our quarterly email newsletter.

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.