Harvest 2010 From Dawn to Dust

The Day begins Yes that's a vine and they are grapes, so start picking JP"
Keep smiling Tim only 60 tons left to pick
Emma "what are you doing to my vines with such a shaggy dog hair do"
Peter always smiling even though the day is long
Nikki ! my photo will be better and where is that frog you tried to kiss NON NO sorry take a photo of!!!
Whoops Got the order of photos wrong that's David eating his marmite on toast for breakfast , it might be a French Vendage but it will not be any good if the chief doesn't get his very English marmite in the morning

Time for a RANT

Talking to a good friend,customer and long standing Partner in Wine,yesterday we got round to talking about a new superstore just completed in our local town and how we couldn't understand how people could get excited about this? In the three villages where we do regular markets at the weekend large supermarket chains are trying to build new smaller supermarkets in my opinion to the detriment of the village and the small independant shops still left! I further think that it won't be good for the markets which inturn will have a knock on effect on the bars and resturants?
Going back to my good friend who like me was gob smacked by his sister in law who in conversation on a recent visit said no way she would shop in the local market because she had no idea where the food came from? My blood boils but on saying that it is up to us marketers to educate the public that it is from just down the road and picked at the right time not early to please the supermarkets? Comments please!

Autumn views before harvest

A selection of views of the vineyard at the start of Autumn along with the lees left in the bottom of the vat after bottling the GM. These are stored along with all the other lees from other cuves and sent to the distillery once a year and is sort of a tax which we have to pay it is then made into industrial alcohol ,I believe?

Weeding in what we call the big field can on the whole only be undertaken by hand. This means strimming by hand and in extremely hot weather, the weeding machine just can't cope with the old vines. So the rows are weeded twice during the growing season with the last passage taking place in September, although with all the weeds around doesn't look nice and goes against all the text books the vines don't seem to suffer. I think this is due to them not carrying loads of grapes and therefore not being pushed to hard and consequently not being stressed? This is my simple take on the situation but the proof is in the pudding it works!

Summer officially over?

Well thats what we call tomorrow in our Household, kids back to school after along summer break,it only seems like yesterday that they where helping us in the vines on their first day of the holiday! After not having them here for the last two weeks, tomorrow will be a different kind of quiet I don't know why? but it always is, a new school year , signals harvest fast approaching.

September,time flies by

Yes only a month away from Harvest and the weeding continues relentlessly only another 100 rows to do! The weather has been kind to us with some unusually hot days above 40 centigrade last week and still 30 degrees at 10PM so the grapes are slowly catching up, having been way behind due to cold May and June. If you want to pick the main weekend will be 2nd and 3rd October many people have asked but not confirmed so we need to know? to arrange food etc. Furthermore, if you left any phone messages last week we haven't got them because the phone line was down from 21st to the 27th so much for a "Professional Contract" repairs within 24 hours!! Of course that meant the E-mail and Fax also so if unsure give us a call because we have replied to all the E-mails we have.Thats all for now back to the weeding!!!

PEACE

The Gourmand evenings have drawn to a close and our hectic schedule of 46 events in 60 days has come to an end! The next month will be spent getting ready for the harvest and there is plenty to do,weeding by hand in the big field has some way to go and although the 40 degree days over the past week has been good for the grapes its been pretty hard for me. With the grapes lagging behind they have been playing catch up and have come on leaps and bounds with these exceptionally hot days and nights with no rain here but plenty all around us!
With the success of the summer markets we are clean out of CF and JAS and GM and our new vintages of the above will be bottled very shortly, hopefully along with VAT 665 , so allot of work to do. The beer has been even more successful and we can't keep pace with demand so if we have time another one or two brews will be attempted?
Finally we would like to thank all of you that have made it such a pleasant and successful summer, with your purchases and encouraging comments and help ,it makes it all worthwhile, thank you and hopefully see you soon.
P.S. We still have a small stock of the wines we have run out of here, in the UK, so if you would like any of these in the U.K. we are able to supply them duty paid from our store in London,e- mail us for details.