Viticultural Practices

Viticultural practices on the 5 1/2 hectare vineyard include medium density (2m x 2.2m) spacing, four cane vertical-shoot positioning, leaf plucking, and bunch thinning to ensure suitably spartan (2 tonnes/acre) yields for Pinot. Winemaking style in the Coney Winery is constantly evolving within an overriding wish to be minimalist – allowing the fruit and terroir to speak for themselves. The Pinot Noir is typically de-stemmed without crushing, gently hand plunged during fermentation, only fined where necessary and then aged in 30% new French oak for 10 months. Pizzicato is usually filtered prior to bottling at the end of March. The three riesling styles – Rallentando with around 5 g/l of residual sugar, Ragtime with around 11 g/l and The Ritz with around 30g/l are produced in roughly equal amounts representing the current evolution of New Zealand palates.

As an extra treat each Coney wine has a dash of iambic pentameter on its back label replacing the usual trite hyperbolic humbug. Try these:

Cane pruning just finished, new buds waiting nascent
A quickening Jack Frost, beware those complacent
Then tucking and trimming, now plucking and thinning
A red tractor mowing, a Coney seen grinning
Ripening fruit, hasty netting,  starlings’ hunger unseated
Let the pickers start snipping, Ragtime vintage completed.

Pinot Noir from older vines is soft and silky
Such things discerning people sometimes say
Reminding me of linen on our bed at the beginnin’
In the days when all our wives came out to play
But now alas, such frolicking is over
A different satisfaction now I seek
Things more mellow, less exciting
More alluring and inviting
Pizzicato is the balm of which I speak.

The Italians say it’s Grigio
The Frenchmen call it Gris
Should we reach for a thesaurus
Or Webster’s dictionary
It’s all the same variety and just a case of style
The grigio’s usually leaner
While the gris is fat with guile
Coney’s Piccolo is refreshing
With much fruit to quench your thirst
Try it now, or if you’re PC, ask your partner first.