Members will have drunk many of Paul Pujol’s wines over the last decade – he has made wine at Kuentz-Bas in Alsace, Lemelson in Oregon and now back in his homeland at Prophet’s Rock in Central Otago. Making small lots of pinot noir (including the excellent Mount Koinga, which he crafts exclusively for members), riesling and pinot gris, the style of his wines perfectly balance old-world complexity with new world generosity. In the first of his guest blogs for Society Grapevine, Paul gives us an engaging report on Central Otago’s 2011 vintage.

Pierre Mansour
New Zealand buyer

When I think back over the 2011 vintage in Central Otago I find myself immediately shaking my head and wondering, ‘what the hell was that season all about?’ Depending on what part of the growing season my mind falls on, my descriptors range from beautiful, mad, too rainy, too hot, too dry, too cold, just right, heavy cropping, low cropping, awesome, worrying, tense and relaxed…

Perhaps I should start at the start and you might get the idea.

After a pretty warm end to winter in Central Otago (and a good ski season) spring really took off with a bang. October and November 2010 were easily the hottest I have seen in Central Otago. It felt like every day was over 30°C and my kids were swimming in Lake Wanaka in October – usually a ridiculous idea until at least January. We therefore experienced very rapid spring growth and a very successful flowering of the vines. This ultimately meant two things – one, we had ‘locked-in’ an earlier than normal harvest and two, that potential crops could be quite high in certain sites due to quite sizable bunches of grapes.

All well and good you say. Then came December, where the temperatures dropped, the wind arrived and the weather became more variable. Although the wind was a little annoying (more canopy management) everyone was pretty relaxed and glad that the early season extremes were over. Personally I was quite happy that the high temperatures had dropped as I favour a ‘slow cook’ in terms of ripening grapes rather than a hot, fast ripening – not that I’ve ever had a say in the matter. From the end of December the weather settled into quite an alarming weekly pattern: Rain, clearing with wind, a nice day or two, wind and then the next rain front again.

Ummm, not text book stuff but at least the vines weren’t stressed and we didn’t need to irrigate. Disease pressure was a little higher than usual which meant we did a couple of extra organic sulphur sprays than normal. As the season progressed through the summer I started to receive the common question: ‘How’s the season looking?’ My response was initially, ‘well it’s the last six weeks that really count’, then as the crazy weather continued: ‘well it’s the last month that really counts’ and finally, ‘well it’s the next two weeks that are critical’ – this is when the worry kicked in.

Thankfully as we entered the harvest period the weather sorted itself out and moved into typical autumn conditions. The rain disappeared and we had calm settled weather right through the harvest period. We had successfully dodged any disease issues and our yields were right on target, time to make wine.

At Prophet’s Rock we harvested some of the best fruit I have seen from our two sites thanks to a nice finish to the season and some excellent work from our team of pickers. Any fruit that showed signs of shrivel or damage from the weather was left on the ground for the birds. They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that a vintage with character makes for wines with character – I look forward to watching these wine evolve and seeing what sort of character that will be!

Moral of the story: When you are in the southernmost wine growing region in the world, anything can happen but it usually comes right in the end. Luckily for us, pinot noir and aromatic whites love life on the edge.

Have you been to Central Otago? I would love to hear your impressions of the region and the wines.

Paul Pujol
Winemaker, Prophet’s Rock