It’s about seven weeks since my last vineyard blog, which misses my monthly schedule of the last few years, by quite some distance. And this one is also likely to be short. There have been two very good reasons for this shortness and the gap.
First we’ve had a very bad year grape-wise and this, for the second year running, although for slightly different reasons. You might call this as an unfortunate combination of nature and nurture (lack of).
Second, with the unwelcome revisit of the pandemic we haven’t been up to the vineyard for a similar length of time, so who knows what’s going off. Not much very likely but under normal circumstances we probably would have started a bit of pruning by now, especially with my new £80 secateurs just begging to be let loose on them there vines.
I’ve written plenty about why we haven’t had any grapes this year in terms of trunk disease or whatever it actually is they’re (about 30%) dead or at least optimistically very poorly. So I’m not going to repeat these tales of woe here. Seems like we’re not alone in this difficulty because according to the latest copy of The Grape Press (the house magazine of WineGB to which I belong), quite a few vineyards have had reduced yields this year. Although probably not typically reduced to zero, although some did have a ‘complete crop loss’.
There were an unfortunate number of vineyards who didn’t harvest and some of these were established vineyards with many years under their collective belts.
Chairman’s message re Harvest Report
The explanation from these, experienced and often commercial, vineyards has inevitably been the weather (as opposed to, in my case, a large amount of incompetence) and usually specifically the frost damage in late May. Which we experienced but I think our steep hillside location saved us. Unfortunately being saved at this point only opened up the option of complete disaster later in the year and for different reasons (see above).
Anyway, when I received an email from ‘my’ agronomist a week ago enquiring about the state of the vineyard, I could say with complete honesty, no idea mate, we haven’t been there for two months. Despite my lukewarm response, his email did set me wondering about the future of our vineyard. His offer of developing a ‘suggested programme for the year and associated costs’, at least implied optimism and a future. It’s been easy to put the vineyard out of my mind as we’ve been nowhere near it but next year we will need all the optimism we can muster.
I’m quite clear in my mind that we will not give up. We’ve come too far and invested too much time, effort and money to give up now. My son-in-law’s response to this year’s difficulty was simple, we’ll replant. There speaks an optimist of 40 something years. I don’t mind the work or the expense of replanting but vines are slow to grow and bear fruit (if they ever do) and I’m 72 years old. Yes, it would be nice to leave a legacy but I’d also rather hoped that 2018 (when we made about 600 or so bottles (equivalent) of both decent red and white wine, was going to be the norm rather than the exception. Silly me.
So with a view of the future, (and I have just sent Wine GB a new photo of the vineyard in happier times to put on their website (WineGB Website:Vineyard/Winery Listing), so I must have some view of the future) assuming there will come a time when we can get back to our vineyard I look with some fondness on the invoice for membership (£102) of the above WineGB organisation and Midland and North region).
True it’s painful to peruse their magazine / journal and read of great successes elsewhere in the English and Welsh vineyard industry. But, as I say above, it’s not been a perfect year for other vineyard owners either and misery, as we know, loves company.
And life certainly goes on elsewhere in the English and Welsh wine world and it seems we’re still a part of it, although not necessarily in the way we might have wished for. And I don’t mean just being asked for some money either. Only yesterday I received an email (not just me you understand but to all members) from one of the English and Welsh vineyard bigwigs. Wow. He was asking for photos of dogs in vineyards.
Now we may not have pictures of grapes in our vineyard but one thing we do have in abundance are pictures of dogs. From a selection of many, I sent him the photo above taken last winter. Yes it does look a bit bleak but still healthy. Little did we know, as we all (people and dogs) looked out over our picturesque vineyard what 2020 had in store for us. I repeat, it’s been a f–cker of a year. Next year will surely be better? I mean it must be right?
PS.One bit of good news this year is the launching of The Vineyard Years podcast. Thanks to my mate PW for taking the lead on this.