The month freewheeled in on a slipstream of unreasonably unseasonable weather, easing us into Vintage 2014 with a warm, deceptively gentle little shove. Pruning the vines is moving at a fast pace, as we make hay while the sun shines, so to speak. Silence reigns in the cellars, thank goodness. Last month Eric roared at […]
We woke up and found it was December. Which is odd, because a few recalcitrant barrels are still fermenting … so it should be late October, or at a pinch, early November – at the very, very latest. When this is all over, 2013 will go down in our books as the Year of the […]
Aftermath generally refers to after a disaster, and this was not one. But the fact remains, we feel as if we have been through a storm: exhausted, but glad to be alive. And the funny thing is, the harvest of 2013 wasn’t even all that « difficult »; in fact, it was quite well behaved in that […]
Never has a harvest been so eagerly awaited as the 2013. Never have we had such a complicated year leading up to it: really late flowering of the vines, really late ‘veraison’ when the grapes begin to ripen, hail in July, more rainfall before summer’s end than we normally get in a whole year … […]
No, this was not our idea. Normally at the beginning of September we are harvesting the grapes for our fizz. But this is not a normal year, and so we are not harvesting the grapes for our fizz. We are sitting here twiddling our thumbs, and scratching our heads. At least the month opened with […]