After 35 years of milking cows, Elmside Farm was converted to Elmside Estate, and the last 3 years has seen an initial planting of 5 acres of grapes, grow to 110 acres. And according to owner Dean Chisnall, "we haven't looked back".
First approached by Grovemill in Blenhiem to grow a five acre block of grapes, they planted 25 acres in the first year, this has progressed over the last 3 years and they stopped milking the cows 2 years ago. The grapes are mainly chardonnay and pinot and this year they have planted a lot of sauvignon and reisling.
"The four main varieties, and a bit of a cross section of everything, with a small block of merlot and some cabernet sauvignon as well. We are currently contract growing for Waimea Estates and Tim Finn at Neudorf Estate, trying to get a return on all the capital first before we start at doing something ourselves," Dean said.
His vines are especially vigorous due to the properties dairy history and high fertility. The high vigor means the vines are quite leafy, potentially reducing the sunlight getting to the grapes, lowering the fruit brix levels, and causing possible pH problems.
Three months ago the purchase of a new SAME tractor, with vine trimmer and turbo plucker attachments from Vern Malcolm at Malcolm Equipment in Richmond, has significantly reduced the job of removing the excess vine leaves.
"The whole concept has been around for quite sometime, the trimming and plucking, but this unit is slightly advanced, the turbo plucker has a bit more oomph. You can concentrate on the sickle on the front, and the plucker sucks the leaves out of the required zone."
"This is our first real harvest this year, we had a hand pick last year of a small block," he said.
