A Note on Benfield & Delamare

Introduction.

From the mid eighties, Sue & I had been making forays into the Wairarapa from Wellington, looking for potential vineyard sites. In early 1987, we purchased our first small block on Cambridge Road, the following year we made a trial small batch of wine from Michael & Doris Eden’s Merlot grown on Oxford St, and bought the adjoining block in 1988. Our final purchase was the house block on New York Street in 1992. In all, a total area of 6.5 acres or a little less than 6 of potential vineyard after buildings, access and headlands are deducted.

From the beginning our intention was to stay small, to specialise, and to make as good a wine as humanly possible. To this end, we carefully researched climatic, soil and cultivar information, we looked at what others were doing, and in the end decided to run with Bordeaux reds.

The Vineyard.

One of the most important determinants of the final wine, and an area we did most research. At the time it seemed bold, to break with the wide row tradition, but today it is becoming far more common. Our original plantings were at 1.2m centers in rows spaced at 1.5 meters. By 1990, grafted vines were being planted at 0.9m centers in the 1.5m rows, a density of around 7500 vines/Ha. A point of difference with most others is running only 8 buds a vine in the grafted plantings, and 10 buds in the earlier ungrafted vines. Pruning is Bordelaise Guyot, single cane and spur, 2 buds on the spur, and 6 on the cane.

Vines are summer pruned of unwanted canes and lower laterals. Leaf plucking is not extreme, as the system gives quite an open canopy , we aim for around 60% bunch exposure. Depending on the season, we top trim once or twice at around 16 leaves per cane.

Both our lighter soil blocks, ie. the house & Cambridge Rd. are predominantly in Cabernet Sauvignon, though with increasing plantings of Cabernet Franc as we replace own rooted vines with their better performing grafted counterparts. Oxford Street is largely planted with Merlot, clones include the old Berrysmith imports plus our own importation of INRA 181 and 314. Getting Merlot to flower reliably has been a problem. This is now being addressed by split pruning, to spread the flowering period, and resolving nutrient deficiency problems.

The Winery.

From an initial starting point of Professor Peynaud’s little handbook in 1988/89, we have been constantly evolving our procedures and improving practices for wine based on our grapes. We have from the beginning used closed tanks, which gives flexibility on maceration times, generally between 18 and 24 days, depending on vintage. Malolactic inoculation has until recently been with primary ferment, but we are experimenting with delaying this till post ferment.

Pressing uses our 700L basket press, single press, and press wine added straight back to free run juice, settled and racked to barrels for around 17 to 18 months maturation. For the premium juice, we like to use around 50% new oak. Light egg white fining occurs in the first year. Bottling is done in house, so we can leave the bottles upright for around a week to ensure a proper and long lasting cork closure.

The Wine.

When we started in 1987, we sought to make as good a wine as we could, yet until we had the fruit, and made trial batches, we could not define what the wine was we would make. The were no yard sticks there in 1987. The trial vintage of 1989 was a pointer, and 1990 to us was a revelation as to what our vineyards could achieve.

It is obvious our vineyards and viticulture do give a distinctly different fruit composition and nature to the resulting wine. An unusual balance and elegance, yet with a substantial but not overbearing structure. There is no coarseness.

Red wine is really very simple, it's just judging the moments of intervention that can be tricky.