OATLEY VINEBLOG
OATLEY VINEBLOG
Cripes it’s been a busy old summer! Feels a bit like we’ve been busier than the vines though. Loads of visitors including, now, people who got our Tour and Tasting Vouchers for Christmas. We did wonder, when we didn’t hear from most of them, if they’d actually pitch up, but now, hooray, here they are, and we’re delighted to meet them. Hope they’ll become regulars.
We sloped off to Spain for a week too, which has put the pressure on the vineyard work. Met our elder son Ned and daughter in law Paula for an amazing meal at Mugaritz, a restaurant famous for its tasting menu, near San Sebastian. Took Milo-the-Collie on the Santander boat (right), staying in a dog-friendly Casa Rural up in the beautiful mountains of nearby Navarra where he got quite used to sleeping the heat of the day off on our little terrace. Meant to get to a Rioja vineyard or two, but it was so nice where we were we didn’t do much except wend the adventurous road down to the local village of Arantza every day to buy our daily bread and supplies, and then eat them overlooking the most stupendous view.
Day after we got back it was off to the City of London’s Worshipful Company of Vintners to meet friends and colleagues at the awards ceremony for the UK Vineyards Association’s annual competition, the main English wine national competition, You might think that is small beer compared with the international ones. But it’s judged by an all-Masters-of-wine panel and is gaining an increasing reputation as the prime English Wine showcase. Here’s Iain, below right, showing off our silver medal certificates. Scrubs up quite nice, really.
But no getting away from it, the vines are dragging their feet. A cool May meant flowering started late, but then it coincided with the Wimbledon heatwave and we hoped briefly that the swift fruit-set of the first-flowering vines signalled a catch-up. But the vines further down the slope didn’t get their stamens out in time, and although the later weeks of July were mostly dry and quite sunny, the temperature average was distinctly cool, giving more-than-usual variability across the vineyard in the swelling grapes, especially our later grapes, the Kernling. At the bottom of the slope we’ll have to thin the bunches to get them to ripen. Our house vine, on our south wall, which is a black eating grape, has just started to turn colour, a key milestone because it’s so definite, and it’s more than a week later than 2013, which was itself a late year. Well, time will tell...
Excitement yesterday - the guys from the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute are studying grapevine ripening as an indicator for climate change and hoping in the process to identify what makes a good location for vines. They asked for volunteers for temperature monitoring at the SWVA summer meeting and we put our names in the hat. So they came and installed some tiny temperature loggers, enclosed in white plastic piping to keep the sun off, to monitor our microclimate and compare it in due course with grape ripening (below). Be interesting to see if their loggers agree with ours.
Meanwhile it’s the August slog of trimming the vines and strimming off the under-vine grass growth. We’re more than halfway through the Kernling. The strimming is a nice job for first thing in the morning, watching the sun come up, to give the strimmer batteries a chance to recharge for another session later on.The Madeleine was topped in early July but will need all-over trimming as soon as the Kernling is finished. And then, gosh the seasons turn quickly these days, we’ll be starting to measure the Madeleine sugars to predict the harvest date.
All about to change on the wine front. Sold out of our Barrel Matured 2011 and down to the last few bottles of Leonora’s 2011 and Barrel Matured 2013. Our Celebration Case and Six have been the only way to buy these wines for a while now, but very soon we’ll only have our mainstream wines left. We’re giving sneak previews of our 2014 Leonora’s and Jane’s to vineyard visitors, but the 2014 Barrel Matured needs longer to mature, so our mixed cases will have to be a bit more mainstream than usual for the next few months.
Some of the baby gap-filling vines are looking very pale. We think it’s just the summer dryness and immature roots, so we’re not too worried. Hope it’s nothing more. The olive tree and the cork oak (see last post) are still doing well though.
Dry and quite sunny, but cool. The vines are fine, with little disease pressure, but grape growth is on the slow side. Busy with visitors and with the usual August jobs of trimming, strimming and mowing the nature area.
Just back from a week in northern Spain, complete with Milo the collie.
To the glittering Vintners Hall to collect our UKVA Silver Medals.
Nearly sold out of all but our “mainstream” wines.
A SLOW GROWING SUMMER
Wednesday, 12 August 2015
Newly-strimmed-under high-trained vines with their ends trimmed.