The vineyard
Situated in Letts Gully, Alexandra, our vineyard is able to access all the special things that make Central Otago Pinot Noir such a sought after wine.
Our vineyard covers 4.2 ha and we planted the first half in 2002 on ungrafted roots. the remainder was planted in 2003 on phylloxera resistant rootstocks. From that time they have received the influence of hot sunny days and extremely cold night frosts to create the fine vintage that we present to you now.
The Greylands Ridge Vineyard has 12000 plants which produces 1500 - 1700 cases of wine in a good season. The bud burst occurs in October and harvesting takes place in late April or early May. The 2006 vintage was harvested in the second week of May.
Our Pinot Noir is then aged for 10 months in French Oak and bottled with screwcaps.
You can see some more of the extreme climate that produces such a fine pinot noir in the following photos taken at our vineyard during the last seasons.
[Click the photos below to see a larger photo.]
The vineyard is exposed to a Northwester wind and is frost prone. We experienced 11 frosts in the early 2006-2007 season but only had two frosts in the later season, When necessary we fight the frosts by water spraying.
The Alexandra climate is dry with an average rainfall of 360mm, and therefore we also irrigate the grapes. Alexandra averages 2025 sunshine hours per yearwith a mean temperature of 10.8°C from a highest of 37.2°C to a low of -11.7°C.
Alexandra has a continental climate with four very different seasons. Very cold winters are offset by hot summers meaning that our hot days and cool evenings are great for Pinot Noir flavour development.These climatic conditions means the vineyard has no problems with disease as the humidity is very low.
Careful intensive viticulture with soil water monitoring, shoot thinning and leaf plucking allows us to aim for a low yield of five tonnes per hectare. The vines are netted from February until harvesting when they are harvested at 23 -25 Brix depending on the season.
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