I don’t write about our vineyard very often these days in fact this is only the second one this year but I can’t let this, probably the most important event of the vineyard calendar – the harvest – pass by unrecorded. It, the harvest, is generally the most important happening any year but this year, when we have let the vineyard pretty much fend for itself, more than ever.
The absence of any activity – pruning, fertilising, de-leafing, de-stemming, grass-cutting and so on and so forth – has been largely self-imposed (ill-health and general indisposition)but also us deciding to make the most of our situation by nominating this year as an additional experimental year (remember we have always described the vineyard as an experimental venture).
So the plan, such as it was, was to compare this year’s crop with last year’s when we did more of the expected tasks. It was overall a fair comparison weather-wise, both very hot and dry summers the kind that would have been very untypical of this part of the country until recently. As for the future well who knows.
To cut to the chase I can’t give you any actual figures until the grapes reach the wine-maker and he weighs them*, but according to my reliable neighbour and fellow wine-maker, he reckons that this year’s crop of grapes (just mine ) are four times greater than last year’s. Which says a lot for letting nature take its course, natural grape growing, no action over action or something similar. I’ll give you a more accurate verdict on quantity in a few weeks.
Speaking of my neighbour, we are once again combining our grapes and sending them to a professional wine maker as we did last year. That was when the wine-maker decided we should make sparkling (dare we call it champagne**). Combining our crop with his has a variety of consequences both good and bad.
On the positive side it means a massive reduction in work load for us (we’ve done very little in the way of sugar-testing, organising pickers and shipment to the wine-maker), on the negative I have had a feeling of disempowerment. As if my brainchild has been taken away from me, which in reality it has. It means that any pleasure I used to get from being the first in the neighbourhood to start and develop a vineyard, has practically gone. Along with other activities (this blog, travel, music-making) that have reduced through physical short-comings, well I just feel less of a man to be dramatic about it.
So all I will say, to avoid being dramatic, I was glad when our picking day was over and I could emerge from our barn and join the pickers (all but one chosen by my neighbour his picking day yet to come) and share that feeling of a job well-done and a suitable reward in the form of a number of trays filled with green and purple grapes, ready to be shipped off to the wine-make. So a real mixture of emotions on this our 2026 harvest day, but at least our even more experimental year was a success.
*We have the data now – last year’s combined total 428 Kg. This year 1793 Kg. So more than four times the amount.
**Two years and a lot of money to make.