Working at Both Ends

Our top vine stripper Lindsay, amongst the Chardonnay

Yesterday the rising sun lit up the stained glass of a big, church-like room beside Windsor Great Park, as fifteen of us – including Barbara – made plans for huge new initiatives and goals for our Company. All big stuff! But by the time the same day's light faded, Barbara was in her vineyard with Lindsay, racing to complete their three hours’ pruning goal whilst the light lasted.

I should have been helping strip the cuttings – I do, sometimes – but I had to write words about Red Heads. So I got to stay in the warm, scribbling.

But that's our working life, now. Between the big power management stuff … and the secateurs in the vineyard stuff. The rest of the family – our sons – all have the same sort of work split.

It’s good, I think, to keep the wellies on, both literally and metaphorically. That's 'staying grounded' isn't it?

Knackering, though. 

So we are well into 2013 already. Challenging times! On the one hand, how to cope with the sudden return – after years of surplus – to wine shortages and price rises almost everywhere. The answer, we think, lies in much more searching in those remoter regions which we love, where the thundering herd does not go. 

Also in 2013, how to cope with the Government? You may have seen our MD, Glenn's comments to the Daily Telegraph, Monday. Few maybe believed his calculation on how just how much our Company pays each year in various taxes, duties and levies. One hundred million pounds! Huh??? Just little us? It’s not credible is it? It’s insane. And we are not BP or Unilever … but just classified as a medium-sized business. Good Wine is being quietly milked to death in Britain.

Our answers to the ‘puritans-and-greed-problem’ are our moves abroad to where Governments are less greedy. No tax at all in Hong Kong. America is going well for us. And Australia. Germany has come on a lot. It isn't easy anywhere, but we have no option but to try. The Government could easily drain us to death any day now. Mind you, as we always say, we'd always have the consolation of a warehouse full of wine!

Barbara in her element

At the other end of the scale, in our vineyards, it’s too early to tell what the year will be like. But Barbara cannot help but remember she did all this work last year: countless hours of pruning , tying, lifting, weeding, trimming, treating, thinning and picking … and got precisely nothing for it … thanks to the cold and rain.

But there's nowhere she'd rather be than outside, fresh air, occasional sun, rain, snippity-snip and the Red Kites whistling above. 

And there's no business we'd rather be in. So stop moaning, Laithwaite, and get on with it.