Here in the evening sun is our summer "tasting room" for vineyard visitors.  The Bath & West Show exhibition stand does extra service in this outdoor tasting area in front of the farmhouse. It'll stay there, wind

permitting, until harvest. The vineyard

is on the left. Here's a close-up:

 

To give extra wind anchorage, the

gazebo is tied down to tubs filled

with water, and water-lilies.

 

This time of year we start to get a

steady trickle of wine-tasting

customers (but phone first to make

sure we are here to welcome you if

you are thinking of joining them). We

are busy too with labelling, packing and delivering a healthy crop of case orders from the Bath & West.

 

In the vineyard we are at stage 1 of shoot-positioning the eighteen inch shoots of the Madeleine Angevine vines. This means moving the movable wires, which are the lower of the 2 training wires on each side of the vine rows, outwards and round to catch in the shoots and then wedging it onto the lowest nails on all the posts, which are positioned a bit above the fruiting wire that the vine cane is trained on to. When clipped into place by these nails, the training wire gently pushes all the shoots to point upwards. Later when the shoots are two foot six, this wire will be moved up 6 inches to the next nail to keep the spreading shoots upright and their tips will be lassoed in with the top wire.