Wyfold Harvest

Fighting the English weather … to the bitter end. Barbara's vineyard is, crucially, a bit higher than Henry and Kaye's or Theale Vineyard. She and Cherry planted at 300 feet in the Chilterns which doesn't sound high but nonetheless shortens the growing season by two weeks.

Wyfold vineyard looked immaculate this year. The best it’s ever looked … in Spring. Then, well, the weather started. That Jubilee weather held back the flowering by a month or so. Then carried on being vile so the grapes got so little sun they couldn't grow.

So last week we had only mini bunches of grapes to pick. They were healthy, though. They'd been well-tended.  Leaves had been stripped back to leave the tiny bunches exposed to whatever sun and dry air there was. (Not a lot). They just hung there. And we hung our hopes on a last-minute burst of Indian Summer sunny weather, such as has saved a few harvests lately. But no such luck.

Barbara never gave up. She never does. Kept going back to Wyfold, trimming and dropping the most under-ripe, hopeless bunches.

Then a little Botrytis was seen. Tiny bit of rot. The odd grape going furry. But with the very moist warmish weather, that could explode all over. So they had to pick. Thursday. Nine till five we picked. It was a weekday. Only a few could help. And perversely such a tiny crop is fiddly and slower to pick.

The black grapes were over the minimum sugar level. Just. But so few of them. 20 boxes. The bigger crop of Chardonnay was under the level on average, but some bunches were riper than others.

If we only picked the ripe ones?  We tried. We really did. Problem is, with white grapes it’s hard to tell just by looking. You can tell by biting a grape, but after a while you feel ill. The best way, we found, was to squeeze every bunch. Sqidgy? Pick. Hard? Discard. Got quite good a grape-groping.

The net result was just half a tonne. Enough to fill our small trailer. Lee took them off down to our winemaker Mike Roberts at Ridgeview in Sussex. He and Barbara have a mutual admiration thing going; we knew if he could work a miracle he would …

Alas, we have just heard it was not to be. No miracle for Wyfold in 2012. Theale, yes. Henry and Kaye's as yet unnamed Marlow vineyard, yes. Windsor, won't get any grapes 'til next year. Wyfold, no. Didn't make it. 

Annus Horribilis for English wine? Well, yes. But far from a total wipeout. You hang on in there and sometimes you can make it. But sometimes you can't, quite.

Farming was ever thus.

 

Still, we can console ourselves with a bottle of the lovely 2009. That vintage just gets better. 

The night before harvesting I'd done an evening with customers at our Locksbottom shop – near Orpington. We asked customers to vote on whether they preferred the Wyfold or the superb Paul Goerg Champagne; a Premier Cru. The champagne won. But only by 2 votes. If anyone still has doubts about English sparkling wine's ability to rival world class fizz … they are probably French.

Marlow's first English vintage

What fool says 2012 English Sparkling is a write off? 

At Henry and Kaye's first vintage this w/e, their Pump Lane vineyard at Marlow, produced its first crop. And it was rather impressive, considering the foul weather of the Summer and Autumn. If Pump Lane (nobody knows where that name came from) can produce two healthy tonnes on baby vines not yet trained to the wire, what might it do in a season with some actual sunshine?

The good result was, I think, largely due to the intensive – well, maybe fanatical – attention that small-scale family wine growers give to the vineyards they so love. Like small children, vineyards have to be watched constantly. You daren't take your eye off your darlings for a minute or they're falling over or coming down with botrytis or something. In just hours, all may be lost. 

Big corporate wine producers, I suppose, find it hard to achieve such levels of obsessive motivation across all their widespread holdings. Which is why, presumably they decide to 'pull out' of difficult vintages.

Fair enough.

But for them to do it in such a way as to imply that if they – big, wonderful they – cannot produce a decent wine this year then nobody can? Well, it makes them … bloody unpopular.

Some very good sparkling wine will be made this vintage. Not a lot. But then quality and quantity rarely come together in our line of work. 

It was a misty start, just like most mornings in Bordeaux. Barbara and I set up the tents and tables with secateurs, gloves, baskets and lunch … for later. Henry laid out grape samples; "these you pick; these you leave". Kaye couldn't wait for the others and skipped off with cries of joy, to pick her real own grapes … at last! Three-year wait over!   

The wet clay soil though made it heavy going for the rest of us. Just like at Ascot. No Frankel's here.Told to start with the Pinot Meunier then move on to the Pinot Noir. About two hectares’ worth. Quite a lot for a small team of friends and family.

Henry fairly cracks the whip too. Hadn't seen my cousin Isobel in ages but "never mind the chatting, get picking!" From as far away as Cheltenham and Sheffield they came. And broke their backs. Real friends do that.

"Just till lunch" was what we were told. Nearly 4, it was. But then, in a year like this you don't want to leave a single grape … and that makes for very fiddly picking.

Home to hit the Radox.

Out again Sunday early. God, it hurt. But maybe because the bug that has laid low most of our Bordeaux team at some time finally got me too. I am ashamed to admit I left the field at half-time. Got in the car and fell fast asleep.

But was woken to see the final result: all those baskets of lovely Chardonnay. 

Like yesterday's they were all then rushed down to Sussex. (Not ideal, but if you haven't built your winery yet …) Mike Roberts down at Ridgeview seemed happy with the quality of H and K's black grape juice, we hope the white does as well.

We'd picked everything in the dry but as we packed up to go, the rain started again. Spare a thought – and a prayer – for Barbara. Her harvest is next weekend. Which, looking at the weather, seems an eternity.

Bordeaux Harvest - my final day's picking

Harvesters at Ch. du Bois

My final day's picking was a good one. The sun shone which always helps. Dries out the mud a bit. The views lift you through the work. Actually feeling great now.  Body's got used to straining … the bending, kneeling, squatting, twisting and lifting.  And that’s just the getting dressed. (The joys of being 66).

An Olympic helper's next volunteering gig

The day off helped. I feel I could go on for weeks now. The first evening I couldn't see me lasting another day, let alone week. I wish my normal job was more physical, I'd be a lot healthier.

No, not caviar, but the last of the Merlot safely in the vat

I don't want to go home. But needs must. Wine has to be sold. I just manage to see the last of the Merlot brought in during the afternoon. That's the bulk of our wine safe. The later-ripening Cabernets still to come. Fingers crossed.

Young, vigorous vines did well, this year

I will be back in November to taste how we did in 2012. Not an easy vintage at all. But I'm optimistic. We seem to do best what the conditions are against us.

Not all our Presbytere vines survive. Like people, few make it to 100

But for now it's scrape off the mud and sticky grape sugar and try look decent enough to be allowed on an aeroplane.

I'm very privileged to be able to have my harvests and my vineyards and the life that goes on around them. But I do at least try to share them.  And we have plans to get much better at doing that.

Alfie the winedog in the village 'lavoir'

They've been sending me recordings of the radio adverts we are about to start doing on Classic FM. Sunday Afternoons. A wine and music show with Simon Callow. 'Tasting Notes'. Whatever next? 

Lots more writing to do.

My dynamic young team like to keep the old guy busy.

Bordeaux Harvest - a day off

Tasting 27 vintages of our Château La Clarière. The day-off started well. Except you get to the bakers after eight and all the good stuff's gone. By ten we had all the bottles lined up round a big circular table in the bat cave where we store the piles of seven cases each from every vintage we have made at La Clarière. The bat stayed up in his hole and didn't seem bothered.

1984 to 2010 … with the 2011 in barrels around us and the 2012 arriving up above us. Good to get away from the hubbub and crashing around upstairs. Good too, to have no phone reception in the caves. It was Henry, me, Guy who was our first farmer, now retired, Justin MW, and Claire who runs our cellars here, to start with. We worked quietly and slowly which is the best way. Extensive notes were taken which I will draw together and circulate to our Confrères (the rather important people who actually buy this wine). We have Confrères who have been drinking our wine for two decades or more. We thought they'd enjoy a bit of a résumé. We would too.

So, the detail I will save. But will say that the remarkable thing for me was that no wine had fallen apart. Some wines are past their best – they have faded – but I could still happily drink all of them. I'm quite proud of that. They were lighter wines in the 80's, got richer in the 90's, and blossomed in the 2000's. But in all three decades we won plenty of medals and actually our progress mirrors the progress made in our region.

 We were the first in our region to sort our harvest and throw away poor grapes. And by 'our region' I mean Castillon and St Emilion. We had very high standards of cellar cleanliness from the beginning … we built the first completely new winery in Castillon for decades. Just being selective and clean probably won us our first gold medals.

But we also made mistakes. Our vineyards were new and produced too many grapes. I knew little about winemaking. But we made 'charming' wines which can still charm. And we got by quite well … thanks to the Confrères buying all the wine every year.

Jean-Marc Sauboua took over the winemaking in the '90's and we can taste how his 1994 was a big step up. He took a more vigorous approach to winemaking and we also started thinning our crop by dropping grapes in August. So we made sturdier and more concentrated wines. Still sort of 'serious' though. Not a lot of olfactory fireworks. 

These came in the 2000's. Mostly due to us finally realising we had to let our grapes stay longer on the vine. To super-ripeness. And we also began to incorporate the fruit from the older vineyards we acquired which took us from three hectares to six hectares (although, due to our efforts at making a richer, bigger wine, we still made about the same number of bottles).

We seem to best in the unfancied vintages. 2002 is a real star with us. Pretty happy with every recent vintage.

By the end there were loads of people crowding round.

In the afternoon we planned a blind 'horizontal' tasting of our pick of the best Castillons made by our neighbours and some representative châteaux from across the border in St Emilion. Unfortunately I missed that as I had to rush a sick friend to hospital and sit there for six hours while they sorted him out. No complaints though.  Libourne has a great hospital.  I owe it so much.

They told me when I got back that whilst it was a St Emilion that won, the Castillons did best overall and the Laithwaite family vineyards did very well.

I have asked we do more of these blind tastings.  The real truth comes out when you can't see the labels. 

It was a quieter evening – only 14 – and early bed as we're back out with the secateurs the morrow.

Bordeaux Harvest - the fifth day of picking

This was the fifth day of picking. I think. Harvesting, your world shrinks and time becomes a vague thing. You just focus on getting through to lunch. Then after lunch you focus on getting through to dinner. You vaguely know that outside your little world there are things i.e. party conferences and elections happening. But they seem so far away and quite irrelevant.

The weather gods amuse themselves with us. Today we'd just started and it began to sheet down. Scary. But it was just a tease. After five mins it stopped and we were dry till 'midi'.

Today was the lowest, dampest vineyard. It had some rot. Some grapes had gone furry. But we've seen worse.  A little shake and the affected grapes mostly drop off. So we lose some. And it slows us.

After lecturing all the newbies about never snipping where they can't see, I forget my own rules and snip open my little finger. Idiot.

This vineyard has mint growing as a weed between the vines. Peppermint. Lovely. Peppermint Vineyard.  Actually called Le Grand Pre.  

At lunch, sit with the older ones. Including our retired farmer Guy, father of Olivier our farmer, husband of Bernadette, our cook.  We compare aches. The French talk about old folks 'Tamalou' lunches: “t'a mal ou?” … where do you hurt? It's chicken stuffed with cepes.  A big favourite.  And Mark's latest bottling from the chai. Off the machine this morning 'Pierres Dorés'. Carcassone Chardonnay. 

Lovely dinner for 19 … cooked by the lads: sausages in piperade - the basque tomato and peppers sauce.

Day off tomorrow … my aching muscles are happy with that.