harvest 2009

vintage update - Monday, June 01, 2009

We finished the 2009 harvest in memorable fashion by picking our Syrah on the 13th of May in the snow. We were very lucky that we picked the Pinot Noir on the 15th of April, well before the onset of the cooler weather.

Heatwise, 2009 was very similiar to 2007. We had 1170 growing degree days (GDD) in 2007, 1170 in 2008 and 1067 in 2009.

We are excited by the prospects of this vintage given the hard work Tom and the team did in the vineyard in dropping fruit and general canopy management.

Aurora Riesling wines win gold

The Awawhiti 2006 and 2007 Riesling have both won gold medals in the International Wine Challenge in London. The wines were made by Carol Bunn from grapes grown on The Aurora Vineyard. More than 9000 wines from throughout the world were entered in the awards. In total only 10 gold medals were won by New Zealand entrants.

aurora pinot gris - maiden vintage

We decided to plant 0.5ha of Pinot Gris in 2005 as it is the sister varietal to Pinot Noir and it felt logical that if we had a good site for Pinot Noir then it should be great for Pinot Gris too. Vintage 08 is our first harvest and we are looking forward to our first tasting.
(200 cases made)

aurora late harvest riesling - a one off

2008 was such a great harvest that we ran out of space in our Riesling fermenter. Given this we left 2t of Riesling out on the vine to see if we could make a late harvest style Riesling. The grapes were eventually picked in mid May and Carol Bunn is very positive on how this wine has developed. This is definitely a one-off (at this stage anyway) and an ode to the great harvest of V08. (60 cases made)