Romancing the grapes – posh plants or down and dirty agriculture?

I don’t know about you, but I never really thought about wine grapes and their vines as part of agriculture. In fact it sounds almost like a dirty word, when associated with wine. To me they weren’t a crop, like wheat, they were too posh for that. They were more like a seasonal delicacy, like asparagus or artichokes, something I enjoyed, but didn’t really pay attention to how it was grown. I just liked the taste.

I have always liked wine, well maybe not so much when I was younger, but as I grow older I appreciate it more and more. The taste of course, but also the variations, the vagaries and sometimes the sheer fun. Of course, living with a wine maker has given me a whole new perception. He has added to my level of knowledge immensely. And, I am still trying to decide if that is a good thing.

Naming a Wine and Designing a Label is harder than you think!

You watch the vines come to life in the spring and then slowly the leaves start to unfurl and tiny grapes begin to make themselves shown.  You harvest, you press and ultimately you make wine. Then you watch, wait, test, test again, keep testing, adjust, taste, adjust, put in a barrel and finally!… bottle.

Through this all it never really occurs to you what it will be called.

Our First Harvest (2015) – a limited edition success

Our first harvest is in, has been made into wine and is now, as of today, in barrel!!! I for one am really proud, and particularly of Pumpjack for all the hard work he did, through out the year, to make the vineyard produce something we could actually harvest.  Twelve hour days, 7 days a week, along with a bit of blood, huge amounts of sweat, and not a few (of my own) tears may not be everyone’s glass of wine, but at least we can call the wine ours.

Getting ready for the grape harvest – Time to Test

The time is coming close now, when we will be harvesting our grapes and making wine. But how do you know when to harvest?  There are various tests, but on my simplistic level, I will be testing the level of sugars. This gives an indication of probable alcohol level, and depending on the results, plotted over time, you can estimate when to harvest.

Of course that does not take into account weather. Warm weather can speed up the ripening process, so your sugars increase quicker. And of course vice versa if it is cooler.  Then there are the grape predators – birds, wasps and a variety of other insects,… and ducks. We certainly have our share of those and so I have been hard at work putting up scare-cd’s to try and keep the birds at bay. But there is little I can do about the insects. (Even our duck, Maggie, keeps trying to steal the odd grape or three whenever an opportunity presents itself.)

Maggie Duck thinking grapes look tasty. Read more about Maggie

Maggie Duck deciding which ones to eat. Read more about Maggie

Winemakers – at one with nature

I will never claim to be an expert on wine making. Because of this, I focus my wine making posts from the outsiders perspective, e.g. we who like to drink the stuff. What I do want to show is that the wine world is not all posh and highbrow, and that there are a few of us ordinary folk out there, following our dreams, and making our own wines. Prime example, our friend Antonio, who is making wine in Priorat Spain as I type. Now, if you want the more ‘expert’ view of wine making, check out his blog…

The Cunning Anchovy

Hello all,

The grapes have all been picked and are now sitting in a tank. Before I tell you what has happened to the grapes, I just want to make sure that you are all aware of what I have gone through to get these grapes.

The slopes in the vineyard are very steep with loose rock which has meant back- breaking work, not to mention long. But that was to be expected at this site.

What I didn’t expect was that, after only about half an hour of picking, I stepped on a wasps nest on the ground (actually two wasps nests working as a team). A busy few minutes ensued involving running, screaming (bravely) and frantic flailing.

Over thirty stings later (this is not an exaggeration), I now had a very fat left hand and a healthy fear of vineyards. So, after that, I picked a tonne of grapes…

View original post 295 more words

Winter Work in the Vineyard – Not a fun job (unless you make it so)

When we think of vineyards we generally think of autumn and harvest, when the grapes are collected and made into wine. This is the busiest time of year for both the vineyard and the winery. But there is lots of work to do in the vineyard through out the year.  In winter, there is the pruning and tying down, getting it ready for the next year’s harvest and beyond.

Our First Harvest – Wine Making, Cleaning and Beer

There’s an adage in the world of wine making – making wine is 90% cleaning and 10% beer.  The Cleaning has to be done and done thoroughly, both before and after using any and all equipment. Why so fastidious? There are a lot of mildews, rots, chemical reactions and more in the world of agriculture and so, to limit the chances of spoilage, you clean. And yes, wine making is part of this agricultural world, just rather glorified beyond the likes of, say, wheat growing for cereal, possibly because you have to do rather more to get to the complete product.

Our First Harvest – Pursuing grapes, bees, birds, mildew and rot

We were given the go ahead to work on our vineyard in September, right in the middle of harvest time. Talk about thrown in the deep end. But the plus side is from the get go we would know what we were dealing with, which would then highlight what the priorities would be in the vineyard in the next year, as well as what would be needed in the winery.

Finding a Vineyard in Burgundy – Part 3

In conjunction with our How to find a Vineyard in France (Part 1 & Part 2), there is another story to tell in our unfolding wine making saga. This story began at a similar time, and developed along side, the discovering of SAFER and all we undertook with them.

The background… As part of living here, we are working to improve our language skills and start to fit in to the neighbourhood around us. The French are wonderful about inviting you around for drinks and nibbles of an early evening to get to know each other, and in our case a chance to practise our developing French, or sometimes their English. Either way, discussions about vineyards were generally soon to crop up and it was very heart warming how much everyone wanted to assist us.

It was at a reciprocal (very much how it is done here) drinks & nibbles  with some neighbours that we were told of a nearby Chateau that had vines that were going to the birds, literally. It was possible the owners might be willing to let us have the grapes, rather than the birds and bees, to make into wine.  Would we like an introduction? Can birds and bees fly?

How to Find a Vineyard in France (or not) – Part I

We spent our first half a year here in France trying to understand how things worked, let alone in French.  We both needed to learn and improve our French, but at the same time we also needed to figure out how we go about finding an available vineyard to buy or rent.

We had come to France after all to make our own wine.