I don’t usually post two vineyard blogs so close together but things have been happening that I want to get off my chest, so here’s the second one.* To think that about this time last year we were standing in our vineyard looking at the vines and thinking what jolly fine fellows we were. How…
Category: Vineyard
Vineyard 62 Being in control of your vineyard? No way
I have to say this right up front, if you’re the kind of person who likes to be in control of his or her retirement life, maybe having your own vineyard is not the retirement activity for you. Unless you pay somebody to make the decisions / do the work for you. We do pay…
Vineyard 61 : Looking to the future, don’t be silly
If I were a proper vineyard owner i.e. doing it commercially, I suppose I would be considerably more accurate in my record-keeping. For example I would make a clear note of when the first actual grapes, small though they may be (see above), appear on the vines. Of course it’s not easy, or even possible,…
Vineyard 60 : perhaps there’s a book in it
Some kind of milestone, 60 vineyard blogs, that makes over 60,000 words. Not bad for the perhaps still most Northerly vineyard in England, planted as an experiment and as a retirement activity about 7 years ago. Not bad at all. And it’s still all happening even as we speak. I really must make it into…
Vineyard 59 : buds bursting out all over
I’m a little late in posting this blog. It’s nearer 2 months since the last one rather than the one month interval I usually aim for. It’s not that there hasn’t been plenty happening in my wine world, there has. But as we’ve been away for over three weeks in Ireland, it hasn’t all been…
Vineyard 58 : Is this why we do it?
A retirement blog about the vineyard. My Facebook manager / friend suggests I should repeat some of the early vineyard blogs. Bearing in mind there are 57, now 58, blogs in this series, that gives me plenty of choice and yet I’m uneasy with this strategy. I’m not sure why exactly. What do you think…
Vineyard 57 : It’s getting difficult
We possibly thought owning a vineyard, albeit a small one, would be more fun than this. Although knowing my usual scepticism about my projects, probably not. If we wanted a reminder of the tedious side of vineyard life I wouldn’t need to look for ‘inspiration’ to the weather side of things – too hot a…
Vineyard 56: And we thought we had it hard
There’s no doubt that the topic of this vineyard blog, blog no. 56, should be me writing about how our 2018 vintage wine is shaping up, the one which is currently in vats (plastic not oak) at our wine-makers. I wrote in the last blog, posted nearly 2 months ago, that I had been invited…
Vineyard 55: It’s all happening and sometimes I wish it wasn’t
A retirement blog about making wine. I’m sure that if I look back at my vineyard blogs over the last 4 or 5 years at this time of the year, there wouldn’t be much happening. I’d be struggling to find a topic to write about. But not this year simply because when you’ve got wine…
Vineyard 54 : And after the harvest
I wrote in my last vineyard / retirement blog that I hadn’t given much thought to the future of our wine. We’ve got this far, keeping a little of our sanity, by taking it one step at a time, not getting too far ahead of ourselves etc. I said I hadn’t thought much about the…