Thrilled! Yours truly (right), delivering Oatley Jane’s 13 to the Pyramid Stage dressing rooms. Yes that IS the iconic silhouette just visible in the rain, behind. So excited to be delivering to Glasto, having gone last year for the first time, seen Dolly Parton (Good Golly it’s DOLLY!) and LOVED it. So we all set off in the truck, last Monday in the rain, me, Iain and Milo, determined to relish the experience of delivering OUR WINE to the actual Pyramid Stage.

But, well, we should have thought. Security is really tight on the site. No dogs. No, sorry not even if he IS tied in. No dogs at all. No way. Sorry. So there we are. Iain and Milo spent an hour standing in the rain at Red Gate, while I got to do the exciting bit. Got the pass, got the Health and Safety briefing, slithered the truck down the tracks we’d mud-trudged last year, a few false leads, including wading a mud puddle right over my trainers (Doh, you KNOW you have to wear wellies!) and finally located the lovely Debbi. And Oatley had landed. Hope they like it.

Like last year, despite the rain and the boggling massiveness and complexity of the operation, was so impressed by how cheery, friendly, intelligent and helpful everyone was. A model. The guy who kindly agreed to take the photo actually really wanted to help me carry in the boxes.

It’s been a busy, sociable midsummer. Three weekends of summer fairs on the trot, four visits from other vineyards, and three big tasting groups who were picnicking too. The fairs were Sustainability Fairs at Glastonbury Abbey ruins, a magic place, and on the playing fields of Queen’s College Taunton. Then last but not least last Saturday, very locally at the Walled Gardens of Cannington. All of them sunny, happy, family afternoons. Our Jane’s 13 is drinking well - it’s developed more of a tropical fruit flavour to replace it’s young greenness -and flew pleasingly off the stalls. Here’s  a link to a little video I took of the Walled Gardens event >>.

Always nice to have a chance to swap notes with other vineyards. Jane and Julian from Warden Abbey a community vineyard in Bedfordshire offering mental health therapy, Haidee and family who’ve recently taken over the abandoned HRH vineyard near Stoke St Gregory in Somerset, Brittany and Jeff and family from Rudius Wines in the Napa Valley, California, and most recently Mark from nearby Stocklands Vineyard who came with some of his delicious first wine for us to taste - they brought a variety of different experiences - lovely to meet them all.

Oh and the SW Vineyards Association Trade Tasting at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol (below, pic thanks to Ingrid Bates of Dunleavy Vineyards)  was very successful. Reports from the Exeter event, which was for Devon  and Cornwall vineyards, sound good too. Hopefully it’ll become an annual thing. An easier way for people in the wine trade to find out abut their local English wines

In the vineyard midsummer is a gorgeous time. With Ginge’s help the trellis post replacement is all done and the rest of the work is reasonably on track. The grass in alternate alleys is long and billowy, the evening sunshine’s full of motes and swooping swallows. The barn owl  sometimes floats by in the evenings and the buzzards are wheeling in towering helixes high above in the afternoons.

We’ve had a lot of sun and the ground’s hard, but it still isn’t all that warm. The nights have been kept cold by brisk northerlies. We lost some shoots off the babies to a ground frost on June 10th - a record date for a late frost for us. But not too serious. The vine shoots are still not up to the top wire except right up by the top hedge. Even so the house vine started flowering a week ago, the same time as last year, and the Madeleine Angevine flowerbuds don’t look too far from flowering, so maybe they wont be all that late after all. Jeff from California said his Cabernet Sauvignon had  flowered before reaching the top wire this year. Of course they’re way ahead of us, and its been very dry there. One of his neighbours picks in July....

Still, all in all, things feel pretty good at Oatley just now. Oh except Shaun the mower made a good start (video here>>) but then had a relapse. Still waiting....