Clos Henri elected Gold Medal Cellar Door 2010

Every year, Wine Marlborough (promotional institute for the Marlborough wine region) organises for Mystery Shoppers to visit wineries 'incognito' and evaluate their tasting rooms as known as cellar doors. The evaluation is held on the quality of the service, quality of the information given, little step further done by the cellar door host, quality of the experience given.

We are proud to receive a Gold Medal for the season 2010. We always ensure our visitors have a wonderful experience and leave our cellar door with relevant information about Clos Henri and wine in general. 'Terroir' being one of the important notion for us to explain, through comparative tastings of our wines and a wine from Sancerre, as well as through a display of soils that show the terroir characteristics of our estate.

We've also opened a little cafe this year at Clos Henri where French cheese and terrines are served. This brings a little plus to the atmosphere, and enables our visitor to enjoy good quality products with a glass of our wines amongst the vineyard.

We invite you to visit us:

From mid may to end october: by appointment only

From beginning of november to mid may: Monday to Friday - 10am to 4pm

On 639 state hwy 63 - RD1 - Wairau Valley - Blenheim

London International Wine Fair - LIWF

Clos Henri will be present at the London International Wine Fair.

We have been present at this fair since day 1 of our existence, always sharing a stand with Domaine Henri Bourgeois. This year, we have decided to have a table with the other NZ wineries, to show our appartenance to our Marlborough land and attract visitors specifically interested in NZ wines.

Our Sales & Marketing Manager will be present on stand F20, and happy to give you a tasting and discuss further.
If you'd like to make an appointment, please contact Nelly France: nelly@closhenri.com

The LIWF is from the 18th to the 20th of May included
Opening hours are: Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th : 9.30 to 18.00 / Thursday 20th: 9.30am - 17.00
Location: Excel London (heart of London Royal Docks, Eastside)

Hoping to see you at the Fair.

Praise for Clos Henri Sauvignon Blanc 2008 in Decanter - May 2010 issue

Rosemary George MW, Regional Chair for NZ at the Decanter Worl Wine Awards - writes in May 2010 about Clos Henri in an article about Marborough wines:

"At Clos Henri, developed by Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume producer Henri Bourgeois, you can sense the European background. So far Bourgeois is the only grower from the Loire to extend his horizons as far as New Zealand. A young Frenchman, Damien Yvon, makes the wine here. Bourgeois spent 10 years looking for a site in Marlborough, after rejecting possibilities elsewhere in New Zealand. As you'd expect from a French grower, he took the issue of terroir seriously, carrying out soil profiles to find something similar to Sancerre. Eventually he chose a 110Ha plot , with three different soils - two clay and one stony. Yvon took me up to a spot above the vineyards, and pointed out the fault line that runs through the middle of them, dividing the stone and clay soils. Vines are planted n narrow rows, minimal irrigation is used and grass is allowed to grow between the vines, to retain a level of stress. Above all, they are looking for minerality.
'The Bourgeois family is not keen on varietal character', observed Yvon, who is adamant that Sauvignon Blanc must be tamed. 'You must control the vigour, and pick when everything is ripe, to avoid greenness.' [...] Yvon strives for purity and finess, and skin contact can result in coarse tannins."

"Clos Henri Sauvignon Blanc 2008: 4 stars (17)
Discreet and mineral, with a firm, stony nose, and a hint of oak that fills out the palate, giving a rounded finish. Lovely minerality: textured and elegant mouthfeel. Now-2011."

You can find our wines in London in top end gastronomy restaurants and in Boutique wine shops such as:
- Wimbledon Wine Cellars Chiswick / Imperial Wharf / Wimbledon
- Handford's
- City Beverage
...

Harvest 2010 in photos

We haven't been updating as we did last year on an everyday basis during harvest. Apologies for those of you who wanted to follow us closely.
However, we have created 2 photos albums reflecting the 2 weeks of intensive work of harvest. We invite you to have a look at thefollowing link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/closhenri

Don't hesitate to leave us your comments, we'll be glad to hear about your reactions!

In few days, we'll talk with our winemaker about his thoughts on the 2010 harvest and general impression of wine's behaviour and eventually prediction on the 2010 quality.

Keep checking our blog, we will be feeding it regularly all year long with news from Clos Henri Vineyard.

Start of Harvest 2010!

26th of March

Quite a bit later than usual, we have started harvest with our first ripe block of pinot noir. The reason being a slow maturing season, which is positive as it enables to build up concentration slowly and obtain a nice natural balance.

The season has seen a very good flowering, with right weather at the time (no rain or cold temperature), then december and january were in between very wet at times and very dry at other times bringing in fact water at the right moments and sun and wind to dry the vines and help them grow. A tough work on canopy management and crop control has been done, with srtict shoot thining. But naturally the yields were not high this year, mother nature has been quite measured.

As a result, the fruit is absolutely beautiful, and the vineyard healthy.

The first block to be harvested is grown on clay soils. One of our main challenge this year has been to work on irrigation, controlling the exact needs in water of the vines and irrigating only when needed. In fact, we haven't had to irrigate the clay soils at all during this season, the plants have never shown any sufficient stress. This is for us a huge step in our learning curve about irrigation, next year we'll continue working on the subject.

Our winemaker talks about the 2009 vintage

A LONG VINTAGE

In few words, it was a long vintage, well spread in time. The maturities were less quickly obtained than usual, mainly due to differences between night and day temperatures particularly well marked this year (the more extreme day went from -0.8degrees at night to +25degrees the day after).

A FRESH AND BALANCED VINTAGE

It is going to be a fresh vintage, with very linked aromatic and analytic maturities: good sugars, acidity and aromas - good balances.

A NEW HARVESTING SYSTEM

With our new winery on site, and new harvest trailers that separate the juice from the fruit during transport, the harvest was really quickly processed at the winery. This enables us to keep a nice finesse as we can avoid skin contact on the sauvignon.

SHORT MACERATIONS AND NICE ROUNDNESS

On the pinot noir, this year macerations goes quite quickly as well. Between crushing to driaing, it takes around 3 weeks. Long macerations are not necessary. One particularity this year, is that the roundness of tannins seem to be coming quite rapidly and nicely.

A GREAT TEAM

Despite the long hours, the team has been working hard, but always with the smile and with passion. Fantastic to live!

Bel Echo Sauvignon 2008 - 93 pts by MW Bob Campbell

"Rich, creamy Sauvignon Blanc with gooseberry, mineral, capsicum and bready yeast lees flavours. Quite complex wine with a great texture and lingering finish. One of the best of the vintage." Tasted by MW Bob Campbell in March 09.

The vines can now rest, under the automn colours

All the fruit in, work goes on in the winery...

Last fruit was harvested last sunday the 12th! Both our viticulturist and our winemaker are very satisfied with the harvest, wonderful quality, good flow of work in the vineyard with a wonderful team devoted to give the best of themselves and enthusiast to get the fruit of a whole year of work delivered to the winery. After very long hours for our winery team in the last 3 weeks, they seem to be getting back to 'normal' hours - with dark undereyes, but absolutely thrilled and eager to work the wines!














Here, the pinot noir are being digged out: After maceration, the wine is ran into tanks while the cap containing all the skins and few lees is sent to the press. The wine after pressings is kept separately to eventually be integrated partly at blending time or not at all, depending on the need in balance we are looking for. The wine ran in tanks, will be transfered into barrels shortly.

In the winery, lab work!

The lab work is an important part of the process, as it permits our winemaker to confirm his tastings conclusions and helps him to make decisions in the winemaking.

Marie Thibault is our seasonal cellar hand in charge of taking samples and proceeding to the analysis.

Team work and sharing of experience and knowledge...

Florian Prulean working on the pinot noir, tasting and inoculating the musts. On the right, yeast growing up before insertion in the must