Matariki Winery experience - Richard Bott

Winery Experience 2010Matariki Wines Ltd
Richard Bott

The Matariki winery and main vineyard are located on the stony barren soils of Gimblett Road.
A significant proportion of the wine produced is made under contract to growers/vineyards.
Grapes are processed from up to 15 growers from Auckland to Central Hawkes Bay including Matariki’s own vineyard.
Almost the entire range of both red and white varieties are processed.
Both organically and non–organically grown fruit is processed.
Parcels of fruit varied from 1 tonne to greater than 20 tonne.
Some of the growers utilise the services of external or consultant winemakers.
For the 2010 vintage just under 900 tonnes of fruit was processed.

The 2010 Matariki vintage team
From the left:
“Builda”
Leith
Dave
Me – “Master splinter”
Desiree
“Bubbles”
Jack
Becs - Winemaker

The winery
Tanks from 21000 L to 2000 L and open top fermenters from 5000L to 1000L.
Winery could get very congested at times with up to 25 open top fermenters and racks of barrels down aisles (not shown in this photo)
Temperature controlled barrel hall included in the main winery building.

The first fruit
The vintage began with the first fruit – Pinot gris arriving from Turanga Creek Vineyard in Whitford, Auckland. Great quality – I used this to make some wine.
This was long before any fruit was harvested from the Hawkes Bay region.
This hand harvested fruit was tipped from the small bins to large 750 kg bins for processing into the press – a laborious task but everybody got involved.

The 8 tonne Bucher press

Red cap management
Gloriouspumpovers.
I could often spend the entire 12 hour shift on pumpovers and plunging – great fun not!! But it had to be done.
Plunging the open fermenters.
Only fell in once!

Then …..Dig outs!

Bottling
Bottling of Chardy for bubbles – Tirage.
It was a super long day - 15 hours and a cut thumb when the neck of a bottle shattered.

Good stuff!
Great friendly small vintage team.
Lots of variety – well most of the time apart from pumpovers.
Learnt a lot from the winemaker and other experienced cellar staff.
Big bar of chocolate was consumed each night to get us through.
Good music – lots of Pink Floyd which was good for plunging.

Not so good stuff!
I worked nights for a lot of the vintage which was both good and bad. It was bitterly cold (-1 degree) at times and was warmer cleaning the inside of the press than it was outside it. With only 2 of us on we could plan our nights and generally there was no shortage of gear.
Trying to get some sleep during the day.
I lost 5 kg but didn’t really need to.
A lot of hours spent doing pumpovers – got to be a better way.
The congestion and layout made things difficult at times leading to poor efficiency.

Finally… the beard growing competition
At least it wasn’t all grey!
Special thanks to Becs and the rest of the team

Matariki Winery experience - Richard Bott

by RichardBott

Accessibility

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics