Just over a month since the last vineyard blog, number 80, so time to get up to date with number 81. The main topic of this blog is growth. We’ve had a fair mixture of sun and rain and the weather in our neck of the woods can rarely be said to be fair, so we’re grateful to whoever.
As a result of favourable conditions two out of our three ‘sections’ have done well. The new vines, i.e. those planted this year – Solaris, Divico and a few replacement Rondo have all established quite nicely. True we’ve had to water these young plants a few times so their tender roots don’t dry out as we think they might have done last year. But yes, so far so good with a particularly honourable mention to the new Divico. Considering they’re in probably the least favourable spot in the vineyard they have always seemed to be somewhat ahead of the Solaris.
The second section of the vineyard (a slightly misleading term as it implies they’re all neatly planted together, to some extent they are but there’s been an awful lot of infilling as well) are what we’ll call our mature vines. That’s those that have been in about seven years, i.e. the first ones we put in the ground.
Because of what we think was (note the verb) Trunk Disease, these are now mostly Solaris as we lost most of our Rondo which, as I’ve said before, is a great shame because, although they are red, they were our most prolific. Anyway for whatever reason the Solaris, which had been a bit shy on the grape front, are doing rather well (whisper it, but see photographic evidence above). Plenty of buds and, just as I write, turning into flowers. After that fingers-crossed, come the grapes which ripen… Whoah, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.
The final section of our vineyard is the graveyard or less dramatically, those vines affected by trunk disease which we tried to save by chopping them right back. I guess the 40 or 50 thus affected are clearly, dead. I had hoped, if I left them in the ground long enough, they might miraculously be reborn. It hasn’t happened. Never mind, onwards.
So yes, two thirds of the vineyard is either looking good because it has either leaves, and/or flowers or is establishing itself for the future. True probably another three years to wait, unless we have hot weather like we’ve had this last July. Unlikely? I’m 73, this birthday just gone, so plenty of time.
Anyway, to change tack here, I remember several years ago when we were part of the Yorkshire Art trail and we used the barn as a kind of gallery, Mrs Summerhouse confessing she was pleased and relieved when we stopped being involved. This on account of it simply being too much work.
Why do I mention this now but this time under the banner of the Yorkshire Wine Trail? I referred to this in recent blogs and that we were hoping to become a part of this admirable enterprise which included 7 or 8 commercial vineyards in Yorkshire that were hoping to raise their profile by becoming a part of this on-line tourist booster. True we aren’t commercial, don’t have any of the basic facilities – toilets, café, tasting room etc., and don’t really want visitors because we aren’t ‘there’ all that often, so why you ask would we ask to be a part of it all?
To cut a long story short, we aren’t, they haven’t included us. Hence Mrs SH expressing her relief at our non-inclusion second time around. I can hardly blame her as she would no doubt have had to be the hospitable one on account of me being known for my lack of hospitality rather than an excess of same. So back to our small drawing board and goodbye to our plans for world vineyard domination.
But then talking of world domination, we visited, at the request of a chum, a vineyard last week that is much more keen on the domination idea, at least in the form of vineyards being used as the setting for weddings. It’s a very popular concept (maybe we should try it, but then again not really). We know at least 4 vineyards that make money out of this branch of the hospitality industry. And good luck to them.
On our recent visit to (I’d better not name the vineyard) there was a wedding going on and so they wouldn’t let us have a look. I must say it would have been helpful if they’d have put a sign up at the very long and difficult entrance however. So we couldn’t walk through the vineyard itself but we could look over it and enough to observe their vines didn’t look any better than ours and that’s saying something. Dead ones, replaced ones, some healthy, many not. Is there any wonder the wedding party seemed to be having their photos taken in the car park rather than among the vines? Ahh, schadenfreude is there anything more fun?
But enough of this, let’s just be grateful and even optimistic about the future of our own modest little Trapping Hill vineyard. By the time of the next vineyard blog, we’ll have a better idea of how much closer we are to getting grapes although not, at that point, ripened ones. So watch this space.
PS. I hate pull-start mowers, they hurt my hands and they don’t start so I let Brian use the big one as in photo below. The little one is a battery-driven version I’ve just bought. It’s easy to start and good for the paths through the grass that I’m so fond of.
