Wine Evaluation

This semester for my diploma in grapegrowing and winemaking I have been studying sensory science. This involves, as a substantial part of the overall marks for the course, a week of wine evaluation. This takes place on the EIT campus in Napier, in sunny Hawke’s Bay.

I set out from Wellington on Sunday afternoon, and as I approached Napier the rain started to set in for good. I found my motel on Gloucester Street, and checked in. Taking a lesson from my previous residential course, I’d taken the precaution of bringing some ready-made meals with me, so I wouldn’t be at the mercy of the dubious eateries of Taradale.

Wine evaluation is different to wine tasting. Whether you like the wine is largely irrelevant – what we were endeavouring to do was to identify all the flavours in the wine, and decide whether they should be there. This involves, among other things, detecting “wine fault” – the smells and tastes associated with wines that have gone bad, and went into some detail of what causes these faults. There was a small group of us, only 10 in total, as opposed to the 24 who attended the microbiology course I did earlier in the year. Also, most of the attendees on this course were either working at vineyards or had recently done so, so there was a good deal of experience in the room, which I think helped me, and hopefully the others, a great deal when it came to talking about the different wines and the flavours from them. We worked through the main grape varietals grown in New Zealand – sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, riesling, gewurtztraminer and other less-planted white wines; and pinot noir, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz, together with other red wines. On the final day we also dealt with rosé, sparkling and dessert wines.

As part of the course marks, we also had to deliver a presentation on a wine-related subject. The subjects presented covered such topics as malolactic fermentation, “lifestyle” wines (i.e. low-alcohol), regional comparisons of New Zealand chardonnays, wild versus inoculated yeast fermentations. My presentation covered oaked and unoaked chardonnays. At the end of each presentation we tried some wines (usually two) that showed the characteristics of the presentation.

After lunch on Friday, we had an hour-long practical exam where we had to identify wine faults, rank some white wines by acidity and sweetness, and evaluate three white and three red wines. Results should be out in a couple of weeks, then there’s a final written exam at the end of November.

It was a very enjoyable week, with a lot of good wines, and I now feel I know a lot more about what to look for in a wine when I’m tasting it. It was also good to meet people working in the industry, and hopefully I’ll be able to follow up with visits to some of their wineries and vineyards in the next few months.

Oh, and it pissed down all week. Sunny Hawke's Bay, my arse!

White Island

We’d booked our trip to White Island many weeks ago. Sacha had expressed an interest in seeing some of New Zealand’s geology, so we thought a visit to an active volcano would be just the ticket. The boat leaves from Whakatane at 0915, which is about an hour’s drive from Rotorua, so we were up and out of the house before eight for the drive. It was raining, but we weren’t about to let a little thing like that stop us: we’d contacted the tour operator the night before, and they’d told us to call early in the morning for a final check on whether the trip was going ahead. They gave us the green light, and off we went.

We got a bit caught up in commuter traffic as we were entering Whakatane, but made it to the White Island rendezvous with ten minutes in hand – enough time to read the somewhat frightening disclaimer of liability, and sign away our rights to blame the company if anything goes wrong. “It’s a live volcano: if it erupts, it’s not our fault.” We boarded the boat, the Pee Jay 5, with around 50 others, and took the long and choppy ride out to White Island – a trip of about 90 minutes. A few people, myself included, felt a bit queasy on the way out, and had to be seated outside at the rear of the boat, looking back at the horizon.

Before leaving the boat, we were given another safety talk – what to do in the event of an eruption or landslide. We were also issued with hard hats and gas masks, and instructed in their use. Then it was off to the island on a RIB, as there isn’t anywhere suitable for the Pee Jay 5 to moor.

The island has been previously inhabited by sulphur miners, and has been owned by various people before the current owners, who have an agreement with the Government to keep it as a conservation area. The tour around the island led us round some active steam vents, where the sulphur condensing was clearly visible, as well as bubbling pools of water. The smell of hydrogen sulphide was pretty strong, but the vents also give out sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride, which when mixed with water form sulphuric and hydrochloric acids respectively – this catches in your throat and makes your eyes water. When you get a waft of it towards you, you realise that the gas masks aren’t just for show, and we were all wearing them for a lot of the time whilst walking around the active areas. We went up to the edge of the current active crater, and looked down at the activity below. The island is classified as active class 1 – which means that thee are signs of activity but no eruption imminent. If the volcano was closer to human habitation it would be class 2, but its remoteness knocks it down a grade.

Steam, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide comes out of the ground

Those gas masks aren't just for show!

Boiling mud pools

The tour also gave us some insight into the lives of the sulphur miners who used to live there, and the ruins of the sulphur works (abandoned in 1933 when the company went bankrupt). Amazingly, there is both plant and animal life on the island – grasses and pohutukawa trees, and colonies of seabirds, notably Australasian gannets.

Industrial archaeology

We had a packed lunch back on board, then set off back to the mainland with a much smoother ride, as the swell and the wind were behind us. We got back around 4pm, and went to find a cake and teas/coffees before driving back to Rotorua. We’d been lucky with the weather all day as, although showers had been forecast all day, they held off whilst we were on the island, and it only rained whilst we were aboard or driving.

Quiz Night

On our exploration of the harbourside at the weekend, we’d noticed that one of the bars ran a quiz night on Wednesdays, so last night we went out to check it out. When we got there we asked the barman about it:

“Hi, is the quiz happening tonight?” I asked, looking around the almost empty pub.
“Begorrah, to be sure, the weather’s keeping everyone away, an’ all” he replied.
“You’re not from round here, are you?”
“To be sure, begorrah, what gave me away?”

It seems that the Wellingtonians are fair-weather quizzers. It had been raining all day, but when did a bit of rain ever hurt anyone? We stayed in the pub and had dinner there, including the quiz night special, even though there was no quiz; played a game of pool, then came back home. Next week, we’re going to try quizzing in another bar. Hopefully they won’t cancel it.