An occasional diary of our vineyard year

Bermondsey, Bankside and Basingstoke

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 22:05:24 +0000

Busy week. Monday to Bermondsey for the UKVA’s Annual General Conference, this year at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) HQ in Bermondsey St, near London Bridge.

Furore of the Month, the reviled-by-some new EU rules on the English Quality Wine scheme, got a good airing. For us it means calling our wines English Wine PDO, instead of English Quality Wine PDO. If wine hasn’t passed the quality tests, it can’t any longer be called English Wine - just “Produce of UK”. This isn’t popular with producers that don’t enter the quality scheme, but isn’t a problem for us so we’ve just enjoyed the storm from the sidelines. Andrew Atkinson of Wineskills demo-ed the new Wineskills website, including sustainability guidance, online library and downloadable sustainability workbook for us all to try out and make suggestions. Click HERE to see them all.

Then it was over the road for a congenial lunch at stylish Delfina. On the tables were wine bottles unopened from UKVA competitions (you have to send a spare in case of cork taint), and guess what was on ours? A now rare bottle of Oatley Jane’s 2009 with its Decanter World Wine Awards bronze sticker. Seemed to hold up to the occasion pretty well. Also enjoyed tasting a Sauvignon Blanc/Bacchus blend from Worcestershire’s Astley Vineyard.

Walked past the nearly-finished Shard in the winter sunshine. Time for some rubbernecking around the Golden Hind at neighbouring Bankside before zooming home aboard the 18.03 Paddington to Penzance.

Tuesday morning off again, 2 hours up the A303 to a Wineskills course at Hattingley Valley Wines - a spanking-new, big, purpose-built winery just south of Basingstoke. In the room with the trlangular windows we learned about traceability, HACCP and QA schemes. A dry subject, brought to life well by Wineskills still-wine-production guru David Cowderoy, with the help of quality-management-specialist-with- a -vineyard-on-the-side John Rowe. Did you know that if you make and sell wines you have by law to have “partial traceability” records
(provenance of inputs and destination of outputs)? You also by law need a HACCP, even if your wine is, like ours, made under contract, covering potential hazards to consumers from vineyard operations and storage, packing and selling. Well, now we know, we’ll be doing it, and aiming for full traceability, mapping all the inputs through the process to the outputs. So it’s time for a burst of Excel spreadsheets and a trip to the pesticide store to record the lot numbers....

While I was learning all this, back home Kelli of The Wine Tasting Company was helping in the vineyard and persuaded Iain to do a little series of video demos of spur-pruning and replacement-cane pruning for her website. You can see them HERE. View them in the reverse order from how they appear for the most logical sequence.

Meanwhile pruning-in-earnest has stopped in favour of warmer trellis work while the vineyard is frostbound.

Kernling for the barrel this year

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:00:31 +0000

Writing this sitting in front of the fire, re-tasting from the two bottles that winemaker Steve was pouring from (right) this morning. As usual we brought the rest of the tank samples home to taste at leisure, convincing ourselves we made the right decisions. Feeling happy. All is well.

Both the wines are fully-dry, the way we like them. As usual the Madeleine Angevine is intense and upfront, with a fresh acidity as a result of picking just before full ripeness. Regular readers will remember that the Kernling was vinified with some post-frost Madeleine that was picked alongside it in October, not having been ready when the rest of the Mad. was picked in mid-September. The Mad is about 15% of the total. Tropical flavours from those, late, fully-ripe grapes, are broadening the slightly austere early palate of the Kernling. Plenty of body. Creamy finish. Will take a while to come together but we’re really hopeful this will turn out to be special. Only just started on the 2010 Kernling stack, so no pressure, it can take the time it needs in the cellar.

Our 1-year-old barrel, handmade-by Wadworth’s master cooper, is sitting soaking, over the winery’s central drain, gently expanding so the joints get tight again. Steve told us half of its first water-fill had leaked, but no worries, it’s nearly watertight again now.

So what to put in it? There’s much more of the mainly-Kernling than the pure Madeleine, so it was an easy decision. 225 litres of that will be drawn out of the tank to get a spell in the French oak. Last year it was Madeleine. No need to agonize over blending decisions because the wine is already mixed. We’ll give it a month and see how it’s going.

Today’s other excitement was picking up our new robot rechargeable mower from Mole Valley Farmers. We hope it’ll beetle around in the summer, keeping the house lawns and front-of-house area tidy and being more sustainable than the petrol ride-on. A man is coming to lay its guidance cables on Friday. At the moment Iain is reading the alarmingly-thick instruction book and it’s having its first charge over on the other side of the sofa. You have to push buttons - it’s got different programmes for different types of lawn. Will le patron resist the temptation to try it out on the rugs...?

HARLEQUIN ALERT!

Sun, 8 Jan 2012 17:42:27 +0000

We found these when we took down the tasting tent ahead of last week’s gales. There they were, snuggled into a cosy corner of the plastic cover. Their size - definitely bigger than normal ones, and that telltale inverted black-on-white MacDonald’s M near their heads rang an alarm bell, and we rushed to http://www.harlequin-survey.org/ to find out more. Yep, harlequin ladybirds they definitely were. They have been spreading out from the SE and reached here in 2010 but these are the first we’ve seen.

On the right are their ID pics from the survey website. Looks like most of ours are Harlequin axyridis succinea - the orangey one with lots of spots, but three are axyridis spectabilis, the black ones with 4 big red spots. We’ll be printing off the ID guide and keeping a close watch for the larvae and pupae on the vines in the spring. Not a welcome visitor. We did send off our pic to the survey.

The winter is still as mild as mild. I took these pics on the right on my phone while walking Milo tonight. Not only are there snowdrops in the hedges of Knoll Green Lane but odd primroses and I passed a patch of what I think is cow parsley in flower as well.

No frost yet but the leaves have blown off the vines and we’re pruning. Four of the bottom Kernling rows are done and Kelli came and did K5 at the top on Wednesday.

Trunk diseases seem to be getting established in UK vineyards, caused mainly by fungi that get into pruning cuts. Not such a problem with old vines, and ours are pretty healthy. But we’re taking extra precautions: checking carefully for disease when we cut the older wood - shows up as discoloured sectors in a cross-section - and cutting back if we find any, to 10 cm beyond any symptoms. We’re chopping all the older cut wood into lengths, straight into a wheelbarrow and off to the woodshed for the house fire. We’re still mulching in the clean, new canes though, to return as much as possible to the soil. And we’re painting the pruning cuts with acrylic paint. You can use special fungicide preparations but we learned at one of the Wineskills seminars from Dr Eileen Scott of U Adelaide that acrylic paint gave good results for them. Paint testers with the little brush in the top work well. Ours are from Wickes - moisture resistant bathroom paint. We thought we’d colour code by year. For 2012 it’s an inconspicuous Driftwood. Well, it’s inconspicuous till it gets on your clothes...

Postbashing ALREADY

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:36:34 +0000

Now the trellis is a quarter of a century old winter repairs are a fact of life. More broken posts than usual this year in the Madeleine: 40, compared with 20 last year. Some of the failed ones are only 4 years old, from the batch we put in in our big pneumatically powered, re-posting exercise in 2007>> when we did 300 in a juddering five days. These days post-makers aren’t allowed to use such strong preservatives and modern treated larch posts just haven’t got that 20 year working life our originals did. Most new vineyards use metal posts now. Considered more sustainable because longer-lasting and in the end recyclable, though they don’t look so great. Maybe one day we’ll have to consider it though.

Usually we postbash after pruning, when there’s room to swing a cat. But the last couple of years we’ve been caught out by a dry spring after deliberately-late Madeleine pruning and haven’t been able to get all their posts in before the ground got hard. So this year we’ve started before pruning. Kelli and Matthew came down last Sunday in the sun to help. The soil is saturated and soft, so the replacement posts went in well for them. An awesome twelve! You can see Milo-the-collie was impressed too. I was pre-pruning ahead of them with the battery secateurs to free up the wires so they wouldn’t be too much in the way, but trickier with the vines unpruned.

Christmas orders keeping us busy labelling and delivering - Christmas Case>> is this year’s hit.

Happy holidays everyone. And here’s to a great 2012 vintage...

DOES Interventionist Winemaking Detract from Terroir?

Thu, 8 Dec 2011 16:22:54 +0000

That was the question at the book launch last week of “Authentic Wine” by scientist-wine-blogger Jamie Goode and winemaker Sam Harrop. Iain and I’d been impressed by an early copy of their book and pitched up. Lovely evening with a selection of natural wines and some great food at Artisan & Vine - in Battersea’s St John’s Hill, where young Australian Kathryn O’Mara presides over what is becoming a showcase of natural and English wines.

Doug Wregg, an importer towards the evangelical end of the natural wine spectrum, made a point in introducing individualistic small-vineyard wines that winegrowers learn from year to year and the variety and development in their wines is one of the delights of wine drinking. Agreed with that, though at our table we shared some scepticism about the farmyard nose of a couple of very natural wines. I could see the appeal of the bright palates to be discovered underneath though. Here’s a report of the occasion from DrinksBusiness: http://bit.ly/tBN3kX.

At Oatley we don’t go the whole natural hog - we aren’t organic or biodynamic largely because we don’t want to spray copper on our vines to keep downy mildew at bay - copper, rather bizarrely in view of its toxicity, is the only chemical defence approved by the Soil Association. We do use some sulphur in the winemaking to keep the wines clean and fresh and and our wines are filtered to make sure they are bright. No wacky stuff here, but we aim for good-quality in our single vineyard grapes with as little chemical interference and as much good husbandry, natural fertilisation and biodiversity in the vineyard as we can. And minimum intervention in the winemaking, so the wine reflects the terroir and the year. Which really is the message of “Authentic Wine”.

Some of the wine journos, MWs and bloggers we met were headed later in the week for the “Great grape debate” at WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust)’s Bermonsey St HQ. Biodynamic apostle Monty Waldin v viticulture scientist Richard Smart on whether the wine trade should promote the merits of biodynamic and organic wines. There’s a video of that one at http://bit.ly/vQ7ce3. Airs some of the issues but never caught fire as a debate, because the protagonists were not really arguing on the same ground. Waldin’s thesis was essentially that biodynamic wines taste better, Smart’s that biodynamic/organic viticultural practices aren’t necessarily more environmentally-friendly or better for vine health. Still, interesting to see wine-trade fashions and concerns changing.

Back home seasonal sales are keeping us busy. We selected our “Christmas Case>>”, a mix of Oatley wines for the festive season, put it on our “Buy” web-page and were delighted to get our first order within hours. Our first Christmas event last Monday was just down the road, “Blackmore By Candlelight” . A seasonal night it was too - torrential sleety showers and an icy NW blast - really the first taste of winter. Strong young men were on hand to give cars a helping push out of the parking field by mid-evening. But the marquee we were in was warm(ish) and the occasion festive - a friendly, seasonal local event. Well done Blackmore Farm. Just getting ready for another evening event in nearby county town, Taunton.

Still no frost and the vines aren’t fully dormant yet. Leaves still clinging to the tops. Been mulching with horse muck and shovel while we wait for pruning to start . There’s a possible frost forecast for Saturday morning that might make the difference.....

To Wine Pantry

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday got to visit Wine Pantry, the only shop dedicated to English wine, with a great position in a tiny corner of Stoney St, Borough Market. They’ve been stocking our Leonora’s 2009 but we’d not been there. I was in London for the UK Vineyard Association’s Sustainability Group - a meeting at London’s Tower Hill on Wednesday evening.

Stayed overnight at the conveniently-located, august, appropriate for a vigneronne, Vintners’ Hall just by Southwark Bridge. Walked to the meeting along the scenic north bank Thames walkway admiring the increasingly impressive height of The Shard, billed as the tallest building in Western Europe, disappearing up into cloud. And the handsome river frontages of Fishmongers’ Hall, Billingsgate market and famous floodlit landmarks of Tower Bridge and the Tower (right).

The Vintners Company, one of the original 12 livery companies of London, was founded in 1363, but its modest original building by Southwark Bridge was burned down in the Great Fire in 1666. Its present, grand home was opened on the same site in 1671. The Company remains active in the wine world, creating the Masters of Wine exam in 1953, setting up the UK Wine Standards Board before it was absorbed into officialdom and part-funding the new wine centre at Plumpton College. A privilege to be able to stay there, in one of their few bedrooms up under the eaves, to the sound of bells.

A short step in the morning to Borough Market, back east along the river bank and across London Bridge, my first trip when it was actually open. I’ve been a bit slow about Borough Market. Loved it! Happy morning browsing among fantastic produce, breakfast of Colchester oysters and proper Italian espresso, stocking my bag with lovely food that has kept us eating like kings all week. And at lunchtime found Wine Pantry, where Dominique (below right with me and the Oatley 2010s) and Flora were wheeling in and stacking their trolley of stock after three days at The Wine Show at Olympia.

Their tasting room is tiny, a triangular alcove opening right on to the street, with an amazing array of English wines. You can perch at a barrel outside, sample from the refrigerated dispensing machine and buy by the glass or bottle. For the winter, their hours match the market hours. Thurs to Sat. Wish them well.

Back home I finished my roof battens (see previous post) Sunday and got the tiles back on before the rain. Now for a gentle winter, I thought, making good the edges. Need to use lime mortar. It’s a 17th century sandstone stable so modern portland cement mortar isn’t right: too hard for the stones and tiles. Not used lime before - whole new thing to learn and find out where to buy. Hmmm. Not seen it at B&Q, so today visited Limebase in the heart of the Somerset wetlands at Isle Brewers. Only to learn that ideally you need to use lime mortar in the spring, when frost danger’s over and temperatures are stable. So just a couple of bags of readymix to practice with for now, I hope enough to keep the winter rain and spring jackdaws out.

In the vineyard the vines still have most of their leaves in this mildest of autumns , the Kernling (below - taken yesterday) more yellow than green now and the lower half of the Madeleine canes bare .

YELLOW IS THE COLOUR...

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:19:04 +0000

Too early to start pruning. No frost yet, so there are green leaves still working, storing up energy for the spring growth. Not to be disturbed in their work by excessive zeal on our part to get on to Vintage 2012. So actually it’s one of those rare moments of the year when there’s nothing for us to do in the vineyard. We’re just admiring the green-yellow-gold colour show which is brilliant this year. The vineyard is standing out from the surrounding landscape like a spring field of rape.

And doing all the other autumn jobs: some digging and autumn-veg-planting over the weekend. Shallots and Isle of Wight garlic are in, including as an experiment some elephant garlic. Broad beans tomorrow and must get some parsnip seeds. Iain’s been felling more of the poplars in the windbreak and chopping up the logs. My job’s carting and stacking them to dry out, ready for the winter’s fires.

Remember that entrenched ivy tree I cleared off the old pan-tiled roof of one of the farmyard buildings last winter? In the dry spells I’ve been back up there again. This autumn’s task is to line under the tiles with breathable roofing felt and replace the old, rotten battens that hold the tiles. I’ve been doing it in bite-sized chunks. Don’t want to get overtaken by one of these at-least-one-a-day showers with the roof open to the rain. It’s quite tricky really. You have to put your feet only on the rafters, and it’s surprisingly strenuous bending over to move the tiles around on a slope while your feet are carefully-planted and not movable. One 3-batten section like this in a day is enough for me. Given a fair wind I might get it done, hmmm, maybe by Christmas? Then I can make good the mortar flaunching round the edges before jackdaw-nesting time in the spring.

A few Christmassy events coming up. The biggest is Blackmore Farm’s candlelit shopping on 5th December. It’s in the medieval hall house - great way to see it at its atmospheric best and get into the Christmas spirit. We’ll be there, lanterns and all.

The Barn

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:12:30 +0100

This time of year the barn is, for a week or two, the focus of our daily tasks. At its most orderly. Swept and everything newly-stowed and stacked for winter. Today we were packing up our visitors’ tables, chairs and parasols. The 2010 wines are safe in the winestore, and the collapsible stillages folded up and stacked here. They’re the wire cages we use to transport the wine from Steve’s winery. A little repair to the red sandstone walling at the side today, too. Like doing a jigsaw.

It isn’t a proper barn really. It was a “barton”, a pillared, open-fronted cattle shelter, when the farm was built (17C). The old barton is the bit on the right of the picture above - you can see the stone pillars that form its front. Behind the pillars the pan-tiled roof is higher, sloping down to the front. Along the back wall is a long manger with a hay rack over it (perfect for storing rolled bird nets) and an old wooden cattle crush. The lower stone walls to the left of the pic originally made an open yard for the animals. Stuart, who sold Oatley to us in 1985, had roofed over this yard using telegraph poles to span the space, building small pillars on the low stone wall to support them.

It made a great lambing shed for him and a still makes a great working space for us. The morning sun comes in through the ivied gap on the south side, and clear panels in the corrugated roof keep it light and sunny through the day. It’s just a nice place to be. We do have other, proper barns, but “The Barn” means this one.

We use it for everything. As well as storage it’s the preferred place to strip down the tractor, to receive the full wine stillages from the winery, sometimes for bottle-labelling, a handy half-way-house for horse hay when we’re battened down in snowy weather, the usual place for harvest lunches (including our first in 1988, see About/History page) and winter wine tastings. In 1998 we did a sit-down lunch for 60 there for my late mum’s 90th and before that there was Ned’s teenage garage band. Lots of Awty family history there. As you can see it’s partly open to the yard over the wall, so sometimes the horses keep us company. Especially now, with the hope of apples, or at least cores if they hang out hinting for long enough...

Golden October harvest day

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0100

The forecast was dry but cold. We’d decided on lunch in the barn. But hey it was WARM, and sunny, and beautiful. A sunshade-on-the-grape-trailer harvest. A full set of pictures in the gallery, HERE>> and a video of the grape-crushing HERE>>

It hasn’t been the easiest growing year. An early, warm spring, a late frost, a cold flowering and a none-too-warm ripening. The Kernling rose above it all, literally in the case of the frost. Set its fruit brilliantly in the cool July. The bunches were smaller than last year, and we thinned the shoots and the fruit on the cooler lower block mercilessly to get the ripening up with the top. Which worked beautifully thanks to the hot spell at the turn of September. The pickers were selective to make sure we only had the ripest. The crop added up to 80% of the last year’s yield and the grapes were a picture. Lovely quality. Delighted with that in the circs.

After the Kernling we picked the late Madeleine grapes from shoots that re-grew after the 4th May frost. Tricky picking and the crew were tired and hungry too. Small bunches twisted around lots of small shoots and some of them very low to the ground. But everyone stuck to it heroically and we finished at 3pm.

A glass of celebratory fizz and everyone was ready for lunch in the stone-pillared barn - Iain’s courgette terrine slice served on a vine leaf with home made bread plaits, pork in cider with celeriac mash and a brilliant (I can say it, Iain made it) Blenheim Orange French-style apple tart.

The Kernling juice pressed out sweet enough (82 Oechsle) that the wine won’t need chaptalising. There’s enough natural sugar to reach 11% + alcohol. Kernling acid is always high, it was around 11 g/l this year, a little higher than perfect but OK.

The Madeleine were definitely worth the effort - nearly as sweet as the Kernling and in great condition. Acid on the low side though, and less than a press-full, just shy of half a ton. After cogitating with winemaker Steve we’ve put all the juice together. The lower acid of the Mad’ll help balance the Kernling. The wine should resemble our 2007, a similar varietal mix from a similar year weatherwise. The Madeleine that we picked back in mid-September we hope will make a classic if small vintage of “Jane’s.

Many thanks, pickers, brilliant job. And Matthew who loaded single-handed. And Sim who couldn’t make it Sunday but helped us clean the barn. And Ev from Paris who weeded and swept the yard, got the table ready and heroically cleared up the kitchen. And Farmer John for the loan of the big trailer. And Chris and Lesley, for putting the party tent together again. And Steve and Peter, for unloading, de-stemming and pressing (now it’s over to you guys). What a team, we’re so lucky.

We’re all cleared up now, and today saw a hasty apple, pear, quince, squash and tomato harvest before tonight’s forecast frost. Safely stashed in the barn now. Pic on the Home page.

On a roll

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:31:55 +0100

Went to fetch our new Jane’s 2010 labels yesterday from Vale Labels, only a few miles away in Creech St. Michael. They’re printed on a nice matte paper called Tintoretto. Doesn’t that name say serious jewel-like colour? But anyway here they are, plain and simple and we hope elegant. The roll speeds up labelling no end.

I’ve been trying to get to grips with Adobe Illustrator so we can design them ourselves. Can’t keep prevailing on son. Some wobbly solo steps. Below is my first try at adapting the Jane’s label for the yet-to-be-released Leonora’s, which needs a burgundy-bottle-type shape. As you can see, this hasn’t involved a major re-concept. Or drawing and colouring in. Or anything much really, just moving text around a bit. But it took me AGES and I’m inordinately proud of it. Especially the border. After hours of frustrating and ultimately failed labour with the Pen, I stumbled upon the nifty Rectangle tool....

Kernling grapes are looking fantastic. Deepening to red, sugars very high. Just 5 days more... Pheasant wars ongoing though. They keep getting inside the perimeter nets. Raising the wires after serious bird-theft in 2009 has helped no end. Just a few, particularly low-hanging, bunches have been snaffled so far, mainly by the canny and deceptively-beautiful adult males rather than this year’s gawky, still-unappealing teenage chicks. Milo’s enjoying the regular chases to clear them out. The nets have worked for the blackbirds though, helped by the mewing buzzards overhead (looking for Milo-kill?).

Gearing up for harvest. Woke to find the party tent on its side a few days back. It had been coping so well we got blasé and left it up in a gale. Wrestled the flapping cover off the only-slightly-fractured skeleton and rolled it up where it came to earth, hoping we can get it all straightened out and back up for the weekend. The forecast doesn’t sound great for al fresco eating though, so the harvest meal will be in the barn. Been clearing space. Moved out most of the 2010 bottles over the last three days from their collapsible stillages into satisfying tall stacks in the wine-store. Today Sim helped Iain sweep out and de-spider the barn and move the heavy long trestle tables back in. Now for the fairy lights...

Pickers organised. Old friends coming to help, all the way from Paris and Hayling Island, and we’ll be 20+ on Sunday. Kelli(@lovetasting)’ll be picking K5, the row she pruned back in the winter and has been looking after all year.