I’ve written before in this vineyard blog about what we do in the winter months. Apart from any maintenance tasks and winter pruning at certain times which have become more variable the older the vineyard has become. Not good practice but that’s the way things are with us as we get, as well as the vineyard, older.
Alongside these jobs we also have to make decisions about whether to order any replacement vines. It’s tricky right now because we’re not certain this early in the year how many will make it through the winter. But we have to do it because our suppliers want to know in time to put in their orders with their suppliers if you follow that. We’ve made tentative enquiries and with our vineyard you can be pretty certain that a number of vines will need replacing.
Another winter activity which is rather more pleasant is to read about what we should do, could do, might do and so on, is reading about what others are doing. To find anything relevant to our Northerly vineyard you have to look around.
Last week I was reading Jancis Robinson’s website. I pay about £90 a year and rarely read it. That’s because most of its topics are beyond our experience and understanding. This one entitled extreme northern wine production (a comprehensive survey of vine-growing as it approaches the North Pole) caught my eye for obvious reasons.
We will definitely have to stop referring to our vineyard as possibly the most Northerly vineyard in the world? This article described one man’s attempt to set up a vineyard in Alaska with reference to vine-growing in Quebec, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. So makes our vineyard appear positively Mediterranean.
As well as providing a general encouragement along the lines of we’re not the only silly buggers trying to set up a vineyard in massively unfavourable settings, there were a couple of other encouraging references.
The first was this whole section when the man listed all the problems that beset his experimental (same word as we use) outdoor vineyard in Anchorage. Rain came too early and harmed the grapes. Temperatures dropped too soon for fruit to ripen. Frost in autumn ended the season too soon. The little bit of fruit that got close to ripe, birds and animals ate. Other animals didn’t just eat fruit but vines. Moose love eating vines.
How I smiled, laughed almost, about the only thing we didn’t have was moose but substitute deer and sheep and we’re pretty close to being on a par. And finally what did cheer me was his grape variety of choice and his most successful, Solaris. The very vine that we have had greatest success with here in North Yorkshire. So some comfort there. Not so much in that it seems he finally had to admit defeat and start growing his grapes under glass.
Well we’re not about to admit defeat and certainly not attempt to grow vines under glass or plastic. For apart from being expensive our wind would sweep either of the above right down or up the dale, take your pick. So back to the more mundane winter tasks of winter.
And then to my surprise appeared a very positive view of the vineyard. An email from our wine maker of last year’s vintage. Complete with photos (and an invoice for work done so far). I had been putting off making a decision about whether to make still or sparkling. Less money for the first (about £3 a bottle) the second £7-9, not sure yet.
Well, he’d made the decision for us and you can see from the pictures it was the sparkling or fizzy if you prefer. If it tastes as good as it looks then there will be just less than 90 bottles of fun. Watch this space.
Vineyard 86 summary
It’s nice to be reminded, as the wind howls across the vineyard and the rain lashes the vines, of the potential (not always actual) end product. These attached photos (above and below) do it better than my words could ever do.
