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The first thing to know for Chasing New Zealand Verasion is that harvest is in the spring, or is it fall? Ok let’s keep this universal and say ‘New Zealand’s wine harvest happens in or around February-May.’

Harvest in New Zealand, or anywhere in the southern hemisphere, is another way to get great experience and a different perspective, especially if you had worked harvest in the northern hemisphere exactly prior to that. Hopefully you’ve saved up enough money to travel and get to your destination, sold your car to afford your next plane ticket and you’re off to another adventure, new land, different wines, more great friends to make.

Johannes and I found ourselves in the middle of Napa on my birthday last weekend bickering over whether the mustard had always been there (me, the idealist) or rather planted (Johannes, the realist, but also the one with much more experience working in vineyards). Well, after some research, we determined we were both right.

The toughest part of describing the aromas in wine is first detecting the flavors, but once you have that down, the next challenge is to find a rhythm in spitting out a description that ‘wows.’ Try this flow we’ve described in this post. Check out the color. White wines should point you down one path, say white fruits, stone fruits, citrus, reds another, red fruits like cherry, blackberry. Sometimes white and red wine aromas can overlap with fruits like orange and dried fruit aromas.

If you’ve cruised up to wine country in the last couple weeks, you’ll notice vineyards are looking fairly bare. The shoots on the vine are either unpruned and naked of all their leaves or have been cut down to a 2-bud stub on the cordon, but what about those vines that look like they’ve been half pruned, with canes only about a foot long?

At 12:01 AM, French time yesterday, Beaujolais Nouveau wines from this year’s vintage are released, just weeks after fermentation is complete. Obviously, there’s a huge party. The most well known event started Wednesday evening and will continue through Sunday in the town of Beaujeu.
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Home Sweet Home   Harvester; totally power rangers, right? Ten tons of Gewürtztraminer – first fruit of the crush in the middle of the night   The Office     Johannes – Crush Control   Jenny – Punchdown Princess   View from the top of the 5-ton fermentors, trying not to breathe too deep. CO2 […]