OATLEY VINEBLOG
OATLEY VINEBLOG
Sorry about the gap. Lots happening.
Big milestone is that the 2016 wines are bottled and home. We went up to Steve's winery to taste them back in early Feb, taking our stillages up ready for the team to fill them up as the bottles came off the line. The tank samples tasted wonderful, especially the Madeleine Angevine that has had 3 months on the lees in the new barrel. That’s the acacia-headed French oak barrique we brought back from Seguin Moreau in Cognac - the story of that in our November post here>>. Real brightness in the extra flavour from the acacia wood.
We brought samples of the three wines home for blending trials for our Barrel Matured, and after a happy afternoon’s careful tasting and re-tasting settled with blending the oaked with 15% un-oaked Madeleine and 15% Kernling.
Bottling was on 28th February and Gregory's, who have taken over our old carrier, Frampton's, transported the seven full stillages home last Thursday, 10th. Or, more accurately, nearly home. Iain's message about needing a short wheelbase lorry didn't get through and the full size lorry got stuck on the right-angled corner of our deeply sunken and banked lane when it arrived on time at 10am. The driver, not our usual Vince, had to reverse it half a mile up to the top of the hill where there is a junction and turning space. Very skilled, but inevitably a few bits of lorry left in the overhanging branches and a lot of mud off the banks from manoeuvring backwards round the bends. I walked with him trying to smile encouragingly. Iain followed with our little tractor with the back forks on to fetch the wine down. Shouldn’t be too much of a prob, we thought....er, well....
It turned out the message about us not having a forklift hadn't got through either and they hadn't loaded a pallet truck to move the stillages on to the tail lift. The stillages hold 500+ bottles so no chance of dragging them by hand. This was the outcome of our whole years work and we didn't want the delay and risk of sending them back to be unloaded and parked who-knows-where to wait for the right lorry at the Frome depot. So the first mile-long round trip with the tractor was to fetch our pallet truck.
The driver didn't have the key for the tail lift as he hadn’t expected to need it, but fortunately found another that would work it if I held it pressed in while he worked the buttons, so we set to to unload our seven stillages in the road. Fortunately, it’s a no-through-road. Only traffic was the postman who handed our post over and turned tail without fuss.
But when Iain lifted the first stillage, the two-thirds-full one with the Barrel blend in it, the tractor tipped back with the weight. So... another round trip to fit the front linkage and the link box filled with what sandbags we could muster. It was a two-person job and the driver kindly took his break so he could guard the precious load. We got back and it worked, phew!
But the next load wasn’t straightforward either - the hydraulics on the little Kubota proved unequal to lifting the full stillages, so it was ANOTHER trip to fetch some empty ones and I spent the next two hours splitting the bottles between them, while Iain ferried them all home as I got them light enough. I could just about keep pace but it WAS a lot of bending and straightening for my time of life. Top photo is work in progress.
The sun was low by the time we'd brought everything back, including the pallet truck to move the wine from the yard into the barn under cover and I started stacking the barrel matured in our ex-stable wine store.
At dusk, having not stopped all day, we popped a frozen turkey pie from Christmas in the oven and collapsed in front of a log fire to rest our aching muscles and, yes of course, try that Barrel Matured. Um, yes! We LIKED it! In fact we liked it so much that later I went out in the dark to unstack another bottle... All was well that ended well and we were tired but happy.
In this long silence I’ve been posting day to day news on our Facebook page. If you “Like” the page you will get regular updates. Read about Ned and Paula coming to clear up the big section of one of the poplars in the windbreak that fell across the vines in Storm Doris, and repair the trellis HERE>>, the consequential felling of all four poplars in the windbreak last week HERE>>. Oh, and, very briefly HERE>>, my visit to Clarence House back in January for the 50th anniversary of the UKVA . I’m on the committee - hence the invite. No unofficial pics allowed in the Royal Palaces and no posting of official ones either. But it was a great bash!
Pruning is well under way, briefly (i hope) halted for me by a frayed cable on my battery pruner that has stopped it working - waiting for a replacement from the Netherlands. So I’m catching up with tying down, which is no bad thing in this showery weather. Fungus spores fly in the wet so cutting the vines isn’t the best idea. After that it’ll be broken post replacement and then we’re ready to roll. No time to waste because the buds are swelling and it looks like budburst’ll be early.
2016 wines safe home but sent in too big a lorry to get to us. Had to unload in the road and spend all day ferrying it home! But the wines are delicious.
Bit of a problem in Storm Doris so we’ve had the overgrown poplars felled.
Oh and Jane went to Clarence House for the UKVAs 50th, and met Camilla.
Meanwhile the buds are swelling and we’re rushing to get everything done in time for bud-burst.
It was a cliffhanger, but our 2016’s are home
Monday 20th Mar 2017