Archived News

OCTOBER
2015

Dear Friends of Bell Hill,

Another year has passed– now it’s all in the run-up, count-down, and race towards Christmas. The next few months are often the most “interesting” from a juggling point of view but also very exciting with the prospects of a new growing season ahead, our 2015 vintage wines are safely in barrel, the 2014 vintage wines are waiting for bottling and the vineyard tasks of soil cultivation, frost protection and spring growth lie ahead…

It’s hard to know where the year has gone... Starting with last spring, Sherwyn stepped back in to the daily vineyard management, working with Julien to overcome the weeds and get the season started with Marcel’s essential help. The team effort and good timing found ourselves ahead of our tasks of shoot thinning and spraying, we felt good. Then, along came a devastating hail storm (the first at that time of year for us in our 18 years at Bell Hill) on November 4 causing major damage to the young, tender shoots and inflorescences and resulting in the loss of half our crop. This was hard to estimate at the time and we felt our only choice was to continue as normal and see what the outcome would be. It was very disappointing and we hope not to go through that again. However, we harvested 4.7T of fruit, more than it could have been and enough to keep moving forward.

More positively, the heat came into play in the two weeks before Christmas and stayed with us throughout the season and the good (grape growing) conditions prevailed through our harvesting. We are fortunate that the biggest drought in Canterbury (and other parts of NZ) in 50 years set us up for really nice fruit balance and flavour development.

A new team member, Briar, joined us in March with a full time combined role in the office and vineyard – with this we re-located our office from Christchurch to the vineyard. We still have Julien with us in the vineyard and are looking for another one to two key individuals to join us.

The year has been littered with travel for sales, special tastings and some export market changes. We began with a trip to the UK in February to participate in the Robert Parker Icon Wines of the World tasting at the Saatchi Galley in London, coming home to fine-tuning in the vineyard, and an early harvest beginning on the 1st of April and ending on the 12th. We’ve had some good journalistic successes with our 2011 Chardonnay in the March 2015 Decanter magazine and all our 2011 wines with Robert Parker and Wine Spectator scores, our latest reviews are enclosed. These are also on our website which we are in the midst of rebuilding, we hope you like the subtle changes.

In mid-June we left for a sales and export strategy trip. We started in San Francisco, going up to the Napa Valley, then across to New York for five days making restaurant calls to the Musket Room, Eleven Madison Park, Public and The Modern at MOMA - all very positive. Next, over to London for a day for a new On-Premise representation meeting, three days in Spain exploring Sherry country around Jerez with friends (our first time there and really most memorable), then on to Burgundy for eight days – a mixture of tastings, meetings, hosting friends and colleagues, and heat! This was the hottest we’ve ever seen Burgundy so we wait to see the wines. We hope, for their sake, not much crop has been lost. After Burgundy we flew to Los Angeles and had five days there including a trip up to Lompoc to see colleagues in the industry. We returned in mid-July with three weeks on the ground before leaving for Asia in early August. Firstly, to Japan for sales work with our importer – Wine Diamonds, including Tokyo and Osaka and incorporating wine seminars during the day and Bell Hill wine dinners in the evening. A great cultural experience being our first visit there and wonderful, respectful people who are truly supportive of our wines and appreciate the detail of what we do. Next, to Vietnam for a holiday break and definite change of culture. And lastly, to Singapore for three days of restaurant calls, special Burgundy dinners and a Bell Hill wine dinner.

On the news of our other markets, due to some changes, we are now undertaking our own distribution in the US and EU. The final leg of overseas travel will take Marcel back to San Francisco to represent us at the second Robert Parker tasting of Icon Wines from NZ and the US in mid-November.

Moving on to the 2012 release…small volumes unfortunately, due to the nature of the season, explained further in our vintage notes. This means sharing the wine around so we hope you understand our need to allocate on a first in, first served basis. Please let us know what you’d like and we will do our best to accommodate you. Despite the small volume, this vintage has given us balanced wines of exceptional quality that show their structure and accessible fruit. After some consideration, we have had a price increase for the Bell Hill Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, our first for several years.

On a futuristic note, as of the end of August 2015 we now own more land adjacent to our northern boundary. This has been in negotiation since before Christmas last year and gives us options to move forward with. We are excited about this and will move the land into our organic certification program from our new audit due over the next couple of months. The land, now part of the Bell Hill title, is called the North Arm and has two fingers of undulating land coming from the Roadblock and Slope, one very chalky (the North West Arm), the other with heavier calcareous clays (the North East Arm). Further planting could be in the future and for the time being, we may have cows join us.

Thank you for reading our news. We wish you well for the coming year and thank you for your continued interest in Bell Hill.

Best regards,

Sherwyn and Marcel.