Harvest 2010 - Vintage Staff

Another member of the winery harvest team, is a returnee to the Seresin team from 2009.

Introducing Axel May...

Axel returns after spending the year at home in Rheinhessen, in Germany, where he has been working in his family winery - Weingut Steinmūhle.

Here Axel is loading some of the hand-picked MOMO Sauvignon Blanc into our press - giving it a bit of gentle prodding with the rake when needed!

Axel says it is great to be working with such a fabulous team this year - both in the winery and the vineyard. He says he it is exciting to come back and see how the wines have developed - that 2009 was a great vintage, and he's enjoying getting to taste the wines one year on.

Harvest 2010 - Vintage Staff

Another of the three harvest additions to our winery team is Jacopo Dallicani.

Jacopo comes from Soave in Verona, North East Italy. He studied winemaking at Conegliano Italy - the oldest Italian university teaching winemaking. Before joining us, Jacopo was travelling the world working with wine, having done several vintages in Italy, Australia, France, and New Zealand. He arrived at Seresin in January, and has been working in the vineyard before moving into the cellar for harvest.

He's shown here taking the first of our MOMO fruit for 2010 - Sauvignon Blanc which has just been handpicked from our Home Vineyard.

Jacopo says he is excited to be working at Seresin, and really enjoying the opportunity to learn about and work with biodynamics.

And as well as being rather handy in the winery, Jacopo makes a mean lasagne... He's a very handy guy to have around!

The Winners of the Capital Awards

We had the pleasure of being involved in the 2010 Capital Awards, which celebrate the best of hospitality in our capital city. The winners were annouced last night at a ceremony in Wellington.

The Seresin Award for outstanding wine list went to Matterhorn. The man responsible for this list, Stephen Wong was selected as the best Wellington Sommelier.

The award for the outstanding restaurant went to Capitol and Logan Brown was recognised for the best kitchen team and their outstanding contribution to Wellington Hospitality.

The ceremony was followed by an after party at the Skyline Restaurant, guests enjoyed a variety of refreshments including the 2008 Seresin Sauvignon Blanc and celebrated into the wee hours of this morning.

For a full list of awards and winners visit the Capital Awards website.

Harvest 2010 - Vintage Staff

Every vintage we welcome several new faces to Seresin. Our vintage interns come to us from all over the world, bringing with them international experience and lots of enthusiasm.

This year three new staff will assist our Winemaker, Clive Dougall, Assistant Winemakers, Carlos Orgiles and Alexis Goodman and Cellarhand, Lars Gabrielsson over the busy months of harvest.

Introducing Lindsey Sesin....

Lindsey joins us from Rudd Winery in the Napa Valley, and will spend the next couple of months working in our laboratory and assisting in the cellar.

Lindsey says harvest at Seresin offers her the opportunity to be part of a small hands-on team and the chance to learn about biodynamic viticulture and winemaking.

2010 is Lindsey's fourth vintage and her second in New Zealand.

Harvest 2010 - Sampling

With our first grapes now in the winery it is even more important for us to closely monitor the progress of our vineyards as they ripen.

Every morning our Laboratory Intern, Lindsey Sesin, selects different grape samples from our vineyards. Each sample is juiced by hand and tested for sugar and acidity. Our winemaking and viticultural team then spend a lot of time tasting - both the juice and grapes, to make sure that the flavours are perfectly balanced before we pick.

Pictured here is a Pinot Noir Sample from our Raupo Creek Vineyard, which should be ready for harvesting in about seven days.

First Day of Harvest 2010

We gave the bees the day off and went for the grapes this time! A beautiful bright and sunny Marlborough morning marked our first day of harvest for this season. We lovingly picked a little bit of Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to go into our sparkling wine base.

Honey Harvest

One of my most memorable days at Seresin was a couple of weeks ago, when I was fortunate to be involved in our first ‘Honey Harvest’. This was my first ‘official’ visit to life in the hive. Rob and I teamed up in our white bee suits and set about taking out the frames that were the fullest for processing. We took out 18 frames all together, brushing the bees from them with a paintbrush! The bees were very patient with us while we fumbled in our first ever harvest. One bee decided that he liked the look of Rob’s legs and got herself stuck down his sock – and a red mark resulted…

The processing of the honey was made able by a kind professional bee man down the road. He leant us a hand powered centrifuge to spin out the honey from the frames. The smoko room was on lock down as the bees could smell honey in the air and came to peacefully investigate the logistics of getting their liquid gold back.

For me, I was grateful to take time to remember and ponder on how wonderful and magical Mother Nature can be. Needless to say we are all about to enjoy 30L of Seresin artichoke influenced honey!

By Leisha Van der spek

It's Pinot we love

Pinot Noir is an incredibly beautiful grape, and a beautiful wine - we love it. It's called the heartbreak grape for good reason, it is a challenge to make and an even bigger challenge to grow but the quest to make the best possible Pinot Noir is something all of us at Seresin are driven by.

A new era commenced at Seresin in 2006 when Clive Dougall took over as winemaker and Colin Ross, our vineyard manager, joined us from a biodynamic vineyard in Western Australia. 2007 was their first vintage together at Seresin. From this vintage six different Pinot Noir were made. The 'Leah' named for Michael Seresin's daughter, is a blend of fruit from our three vineyards; 'Rachel', after Michael's mother, is a Pinot made from the best portions available from our Estate each year. From each of our three vineyards we have also produced a single vineyard wine; the 'Tatou', 'Home' and 'Raupo Creek' Pinot Noir illustrate the characteristics of our different sites and soils.


The unique conditions of the 2007 vintage allowed us for the first time to make a wine we have called 'Sun & Moon'. Cropped at a minimal one bunch per shoot or less, we believe this wine to be our best expression of Pinot Noir. It will only be made when this beautiful heartbreak grape allows us.

Internationally renowned UK winewriter Jamie Goode recently had the opportunity to taste the 'thrilling line-up' of all six of these wines, and has published his tasting notes and reviews on his blog. To see his reviews, check out his blog.

Green Wine for St Patrick's Day

It is St Patrick's Day next week and if you're looking for something 'green' to drink check out the recommendation from CBS's Wine Guy, Matthew Horbund.

Seresin Talk

In the last couple of weeks, we have been getting some good coverage on the internet - here are a couple of interesting snippets for you...

Recently, our winemaker Clive met with Jayson Bryant from Wine Vault TV, to talk all things biodynamic. Jayson has put a couple of videos on their website of them talking and tasting some Seresin wines. In the first video, Clive and Jayson taste two of our Pinots - Leah and Rachel. And then in the second video they taste our 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, Reserve Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris.

And it seems our Gewurztraminer is proving popular in the UK. Old and New World is a wine blog in the UK dedicated to finding the best wines from the old and new world. They publish a red and a white 'wine of the month' and the Seresin Gewurz was the white for February! They say it 'should be enough to win converts' of non-Gewurz fans, and 'gives Alsace a run for its money'. Click here to see the rest of the post.

Enjoy!