Creekside Vineyard Part 1 Video

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Creekside Vineyard Part 1

Ange: So welcome to Le Gourmet TV everybody. We’re here with Craig McDonald, the wine maker for Creekside Estate Winery on this beautiful day in the vineyard, enjoying a beautiful glass of 2007 Sauvignon Blanc. Craig: Thanks very much Ange. Why don’t we go ahead and pour a couple of this, absolutely, cheers to season. Ange: Excellent, this looks fantastic and obviously we’re standing amongst some of Sauvignon Blanc vines here I’m seeing. Craig: Yeah we are, they look fabulous. Sauvignon Blanc is one of the most difficult varieties to grow but we’ve been blessed the last few years. Good weather, a good winter and it looks like a great start of the season. Ange: Nice, so other than the grape class of Sauvignon Blanc, what makes this stalk different from St. Merlot stalk? Craig: Well I think, old grapes it’s all about growing them in the vineyard but Sauvignon Blanc is much like merlot actually very sensitive to the winter and we find that not only those wonderful buds which produce shoots and then produce the grapes are very sensitive to the cold. So it’s a winter effect that I really set them apart from other varieties like Cabernet, Sauvignon, Chardonnay, they’re a less sensitive. So these are the ones that we got to watch but that’s where we get the best rewards, the ones we worked hard were the ones that makes the best wine. Ange: The ones you worked hard with, right? You and your assistant wine maker. Craig: Yeah, that’s right. We all work pretty hard. There’s a team of seven us now at Creekside so we like to fairly hands on and get into it. Ange: That’s crazy, so all these small clusters right here are these all going to be clusters of grapes? Craig: Yeah, little baby grapes, exactly, and all goes through flowering so you’ll find those shoots will basically make there way up through this wire and eventually they’ll be tucked. These wires will be pulled down like so and we tucked in here and then what we’re trying to do is grow those shoots nice and straight. So once they get a little bit of height to them, we’ll train them and then we’ll expose those bunches to the sun and away they go. Ange: So what do you think 2008 is going to bring? Craig: I’m really excited about it. All the signs look great but it’s about the last six weeks around harvest that I really got nervous about that. As you can see we’ve had good rainfall in the spring. It has been fairly dry but this will just replenish the water and you can see by the vigor things they’re moving along really nice so you know we just take it week by week and keep our fingers crossed. Ange: And see what’s going to happen, so we’ve got a 2007 Sauvignon Blanc here. Craig: Yeah, this is actually from this particular vineyard. This is the Creekside Sauvignon Blanc, our estate Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a hundred percent stainless steel so the grapes are picked from these very vines and processed to be at 100 feet away at the winery and here we are trying in 2007. Ange: So maybe you could leave me through a wine maker tasting. How do you taste wine as a wine maker? When you build wine, you’re going to be tasting it, you’re going to make it, you’re picking it, you’re enjoying it as grapes and then to the end result. I mean how do you taste your wine? Craig: Well that’s a good question and Sauvignon Blanc is really good starting point to answer that question because we taste wine by tasting grapes. Wine makers get out on the vineyard just like anything, any peaches or strawberries, if they taste ripe and they taste perfect you’re going to make a good wine from it. So it’s important to get an idea of the flavors that you get in the vineyard and the optimum ripeness and the right time to pick. So I always taste wine with—suppose you're looking back at this vine like, “yeah that’s what it tasted like in the vineyard.” I can see that transition from vineyard right through the glass. Ange: You can say this tastes like the grape I tasted last year at this time, you can see those carefully just coming out of the wine. Craig: I certainly can, yeah exactly and as a wine maker, what you got to try and do is pick the flavors and capture those flavors right through to the bottle and that what’s it all about. Sauvignon Blanc is picked, fermented and then bottled for 4, 5 months after it was a grape. So we’re trying to capture and concentrate all that freshness in the bottle and appose to perhaps Cabernet Sauvignon or even Chardonnay in barrel, that might be 12 months and that’s where you had add some lyes to it but Sauvignon is about crisp and fresh. Ange: And flirty. Craig: And flirty, absolutely, yeah. Ange: As it was described in the back of the bottle, flirty. A flirty Sauvignon Blanc. Craig: We’ve got a very talented assistant wine maker who has a real pick with words and this is definitely a flirt, one for the spring and the summertime.

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Ange: So welcome to Le Gourmet TV everybody. We’re here with Craig McDonald, the wine maker for Creekside Estate Winery on this beautiful day in the vineyard, enjoying a beautiful glass of 2007 Sauvignon Blanc.

Craig: Thanks very much Ange. Why don’t we go ahead and pour a couple of this, absolutely, cheers to season.

Ange: Excellent, this looks fantastic and obviously we’re standing amongst some of Sauvignon Blanc vines here I’m seeing.

Craig: Yeah we are, they look fabulous. Sauvignon Blanc is one of the most difficult varieties to grow but we’ve been blessed the last few years. Good weather, a good winter and it looks like a great start of the season.

Ange: Nice, so other than the grape class of Sauvignon Blanc, what makes this stalk different from St. Merlot stalk?

Craig: Well I think, old grapes it’s all about growing them in the vineyard but Sauvignon Blanc is much like merlot actually very sensitive to the winter and we find that not only those wonderful buds which produce shoots and then produce the grapes are very sensitive to the cold. So it’s a winter effect that I really set them apart from other varieties like Cabernet, Sauvignon, Chardonnay, they’re a less sensitive. So these are the ones that we got to watch but that’s where we get the best rewards, the ones we worked hard were the ones that makes the best wine.

Ange: The ones you worked hard with, right? You and your assistant wine maker.

Craig: Yeah, that’s right. We all work pretty hard. There’s a team of seven us now at Creekside so we like to fairly hands on and get into it.

Ange: That’s crazy, so all these small clusters right here are these all going to be clusters of grapes?

Craig: Yeah, little baby grapes, exactly, and all goes through flowering so you’ll find those shoots will basically make there way up through this wire and eventually they’ll be tucked. These wires will be pulled down like so and we tucked in here and then what we’re trying to do is grow those shoots nice and straight. So once they get a little bit of height to them, we’ll train them and then we’ll expose those bunches to the sun and away they go.

Ange: So what do you think 2008 is going to bring?

Craig: I’m really excited about it. All the signs look great but it’s about the last six weeks around harvest that I really got nervous about that. As you can see we’ve had good rainfall in the spring. It has been fairly dry but this will just replenish the water and you can see by the vigor things they’re moving along really nice so you know we just take it week by week and keep our fingers crossed.

Ange: And see what’s going to happen, so we’ve got a 2007 Sauvignon Blanc here.

Craig: Yeah, this is actually from this particular vineyard. This is the Creekside Sauvignon Blanc, our estate Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a hundred percent stainless steel so the grapes are picked from these very vines and processed to be at 100 feet away at the winery and here we are trying in 2007.

Ange: So maybe you could leave me through a wine maker tasting. How do you taste wine as a wine maker? When you build wine, you’re going to be tasting it, you’re going to make it, you’re picking it, you’re enjoying it as grapes and then to the end result. I mean how do you taste your wine?

Craig: Well that’s a good question and Sauvignon Blanc is really good starting point to answer that question because we taste wine by tasting grapes. Wine makers get out on the vineyard just like anything, any peaches or strawberries, if they taste ripe and they taste perfect you’re going to make a good wine from it. So it’s important to get an idea of the flavors that you get in the vineyard and the optimum ripeness and the right time to pick. So I always taste wine with—suppose you're looking back at this vine like, “yeah that’s what it tasted like in the vineyard.” I can see that transition from vineyard right through the glass.

Ange: You can say this tastes like the grape I tasted last year at this time, you can see those carefully just coming out of the wine.

Craig: I certainly can, yeah exactly and as a wine maker, what you got to try and do is pick the flavors and capture those flavors right through to the bottle and that what’s it all about. Sauvignon Blanc is picked, fermented and then bottled for 4, 5 months after it was a grape. So we’re trying to capture and concentrate all that freshness in the bottle and appose to perhaps Cabernet Sauvignon or even Chardonnay in barrel, that might be 12 months and that’s where you had add some lyes to it but Sauvignon is about crisp and fresh.

Ange: And flirty.

Craig: And flirty, absolutely, yeah.

Ange: As it was described in the back of the bottle, flirty. A flirty Sauvignon Blanc.

Craig: We’ve got a very talented assistant wine maker who has a real pick with words and this is definitely a flirt, one for the spring and the summertime.

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