Summerhouse 2011 Harvest

Heather Davies is one half of a husband and wife team that own, nurture and produce the highly accoladed Summerhouse wines from Marlborough, New Zealand. Here she shares here insights into the 2011 vintage.



This is the season where all of the decisions made over the last 16 years have shone through and with continued commitment to every step of the annual cycle within the vineyard we have achieved exceptional results.


16 years ago, we choose the Summerhouse vineyard site because of its unique combination of soil, aspect and climate. We chose the grape varieties, clones and rootstock's to complement those natural features. We have engaged cultural practices in the vineyard that ensure healthy vines that in turn give us physiological ripeness of the fruit. By achieving this we have the best quality raw product (the grapes) to make wines with a distinct sense of place.


The 2011 season has been an exceptionally busy one. The La Nina weather patterns that have developed over the Pacific Ocean have given us a cool spring, hot summer with good rainfall, and a cool autumn. This has meant all of the growth phases that the vines go though during the season have occurred over a shorter period.


The cool spring resulted in the canopy being poorly developed by mid November at flowering time. The weather changed to give a dry, warm flowering that resulted in good fruit sets. Throughout summer the heat continued and so did the growth. This gave us ample leaves in the autumn to ripen the crop. It also gave us good berry growth.


Each year we carry out crop sampling in early January and from this we make decisions on whether or not we need to thin off some of the fruit. A combination of a warm dry flowering period, warm rain in December, and strong healthy vines meant our decision this year was to carry out a crop load thin in January, followed by a tail end thin in March.


The decisions paid off when we came into autumn and the cool weather returned. The healthy open canopy, the reduced crop and the warm summer days had put us on track for an early harvest. We harvested the various blocks about 5 days earlier than in an average season.


We picked fruit starting with the Gewurztraminer on the 21st March and finished with the Riesling on the 3rd April. The first ferments are dry (the sugar has turned to alcohol), the later ones are currently mid way through. There is still a lot to do in the winery – I am looking forward in particular to seeing the aromatic varieties Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurztraminer and Riesling develop over the next few months.

Heather Davies
Summerhouse Wines



The Vineyards at Summerhouse



Heather & Meric Davies



New Arrival - Summerhouse

2010 Summerhouse Sauvignon Blanc is arriving on New Years day and will be ready to deliver by Friday January 7th. This has been long awaited and will sell fast so contact us today for your advance order.

Mid Autumn Festival - Something for the sweet tooth!

We've put together a few recommendations if you are looking for a great match for the Moon Cakes or a gift for someone special.

Dessert Wines

Domaine Marcel Deiss (Alsace)
Gewurztraminer Vendange Tardive 750ml 2002 $560


Chateau Pajzos (Hungary)
Aszu 5 Puttonyous, Grand Cru Classe 500ml 1993 $325


Undurraga (Chile)
Late Harvest Reserva 375ml 2004 $105


Chateau Rieussec (France)
Sauternes, Premier Cru Classe 375ml 2000 $345


Forrest Estate ( New Zealand)
Late Harvest Riesling, Marlborough 375ml 2007 $160




Port Wine


Quinta de Roriz (Portugal)
Vintage Port 750ml 2003 $600 


For a full list of our dessert wine and ports have a look through our price list HERE

Summerhouse wines 2010 vintage news.

The team at Summerhouse wines in New Zealand have been working hard lately in some pretty cold conditions as well. Here is the latest information they had on the 2010 harvest and other happenings around the vineyard.

     2010 Harvest News

This years harvest was a fairly relaxed time. We were blessed with fantastic weather so all the fruit was picked and in the winery before the late autumn rain set in. The fermentations have now come to an end and the labour intensive process of lees-stirring has started.

This is Heather and Meric's 12th harvest at Summerhouse. "So to the end of another harvest at Summerhouse" comments Meric. "The cool, slow start to the year was followed by perfect summer and autumn weather conditions that enabled us to pick individual parcels of fruit when they were ready. The fruit was clean, bunch sets were perfect and the yields were spot on. So far 2010 is looking like a fantastic vintage for Marlborough and Summerhouse."

Now we are about a quarter of the way through the long but important process of pruning the vines. We carefully prune the Summerhouse vines to ensure quality and even ripening in next years fruit. 

Wine Making News

We have some new additions to the barrel hall this year - French oak Pungeon barrels. These are the largest barrels we use and hold 500 litres. They will add warm sweet oak flavours to the chardonnay.

We will have a more detailed report on the vintage as soon as they get the chance to jot down a few words.