Dosage trials for the 2010 Blanc de Noir

If I were to try and sum up 2011 in 4 words they would be “Not bad at all”. We had testing times of course but you have to expect that in our “marginal” climate. 5000 new vines were planted during the driest Spring on record but thanks to our crack team of farming geniuses they were well watered and are all doing fine. Where others suffered with bad weather during flowering our little corner of Dorset was blessed 5 days of glorious sunshine leaving us with a potentially bumper crop. Summer was rubbish, grey & cloudy but we were saved by an Indian Summer allowing us to delay picking until the fruit was perfect. The juice is all now fermented and tucked up in tank & barrel for the Winter and tasting mighty fine.

Last year’s mini harvest was bottled in the early Spring. The 2010 Blanc de Noirs (1800 bottles) and the Rose (150 bottles) are now almost ready for disgorgement & dosage and should be ready for sale next Summer. Both are (imho) pretty damn good. The Classic Cuve and the Reserve wines will remain in storage, gracefully ageing until they’re ready to face the light of day.

All in all. Not a bad year.

Pinot Meunier

 Pink growing tips, flour dusted leaves, a healthy load of inflorescences just waiting for the June sunshine to turn them into little bunches of grapes. This is our Pinot Meunier. They struggled a little bit in their first year but now their roots are deep in the chalk subsoil they’ve come on leaps & bounds and look set to give a healthy crop. Despite a few early reservations about their utility I now almost wish we had a few more of them.

http://www.youtube.com/WSETGLOBAL#p/u/3/r7BfrQ_J-dQ

Also a good piece on those upstarts from Champagne

http://www.youtube.com/WSETGLOBAL#p/u/9/QJkjty80HMU

Right, back to pruning!

Frosty Tendrils

Pinot Noir bunch

While giving the Pinot its post harvest spray of copper & micro nutrients I noticed we missed a couple of bunches. To be fair to the pickers I did tell them to leave anything that wasn’t perfectly ripe and this bunch might not have been so deeply purple two weeks ago.  If its still there in another two weeks I’ll pick it and the rest of the escapees and make a few bottles of red.

What's in the socks?

A special prize for anyone who can guess what’s in the socks & why its there. I’ll give you a clue; I’m just off to Argos to pick up some electric blankets.

A fun day out for all the family

The first vendage (grape harvest) took place at Crawthorne Farm on Saturday 2nd October 2010. Our crack team of volunteer pickers managed to find 650kg of lovely Pinot Noir which is now pressed, settled and bubbling away in barrels to make our very first wine. The pickers did an excellent job, only taking the healthiest, ripest fruit and, as you can see from the note below, I think they enjoyed themselves.

“Hi Chris,    Bobbie and I felt we would like to thank you and Justin
for the opportunity to be involved in the first year of the “finest
Dorset Champagne”.  We really enjoyed the day , plenty of fresh air,
exercise and the BBQ  was a lovely end to the day.   It will go down
for Bobbie and I as one of life’s memorable days.  Thank you again,
lots of smiles   Jennie”

The bloody doors

I don’t know why I’ve had that Charlie Croker quote stuck in my head all week. Probably due to a combination of trying to organise a team of specialists to pull off a seemingly impossible mission (getting the winery ready on time) while not having any bloody doors.

We start picking the Pinot Noir tomorrow and I still haven’t got any bloody doors. The ones in the foreground are now finished but the matching set for the the back of the winery are still in Pawel the carpenter’s workshop. Still mustn’t grumble. The open portals give the building a spacious, airy feel and I’ve deterred any potential thieves from entering by wedging my car between the empty frames. On the plus side we now have electricity, hot & cold running water & we moved all the shiny new machinery in today. It almost looks like a proper winery. The one thing missing (apart from the bloody doors) should arrive tomorrow morning in a load of 15kg picking boxes. For the moment though they’re enjoying their last night on the vine.

Tomorrow I will crush you

Above: Shiny new hose fittings. I hope they fit.

Finally a nice sunny day on the farm. Its been pretty grim the last couple of weeks but today dried the ground out enough to get the tractor out and I caught up on a bit of mowing. The vineyard really does look amazing now the grass sown in March has finally taken. All the vines are trimmed and tucked securely into the foliage wires so there’s not really much to do now but sit back, relax and watch the grapes ripen.

Aaah if only life were so simple. Unfortunately my Summer holidays are being hampered by having to kit out a winery from scratch in a country that doesn’t have a “Grape Presses R Us” megastore in every town. Luckily France isn’t too far away so we popped over a couple of weeks ago to stock up. The photo below is of my chum Ben looking pleased with himself after “accidentally” breaking the hand brake of our van while we were stocking up on barrels in Chassagne Montrachet, meaning we had to spend an hour tasting top notch Burgundy while we waited for the RAC to turn up.