Harvest started at last!

Today in the sunshine we had our first day picking as promised. A lovely warm day and lots of organic grapes. The Siegerrebe makes up a crucial part of our Horsmonden dry white wine blend as it has a soft acidity and a delicious aromatic style. It will make up about 15% of the blend.

This years crop of Siegerrebe has been wonderful - no mildew, very little bird damage and a good yield at around 2kgs per vine. The grapes are taken straight to the winery at Rotherfield where the press is loaded and started immediately. The photo above shows the juice running from the press. This juice will be settled overnight and then we hope fermentation will start spontaneously without the need for adding yeast.

Thanks to all who helped with picking today - fantastic job. I hope you will want to return for the next day picking (we will probably have 2 or 3 days picking next week).

Grape picking starts next week!

Siegerrebe grapes ready to pick

Pinot Noir - a week to go at least

After one of the sunniest summers this year we find that the grapes are slightly late in their ripening this year. We have been extremely patient watching the grapes in a week when we would normally be madly picking. Our first variety to pick is Siegerrebe which we normally harvest around the 20th September. This year it is still unpicked with a harvest planned for Monday the 7th October - the latest ever for this variety. The reason for this is the cold wet weather in the Spring that we've probably forgotten about by now. Bud burst was a fortnight behind normal and flowering was also late. Often the vines catch up from a slow start, but this year they haven't managed it. :Luckily the weather is looking OK into mid October so we can afford to wait.

The great news is that we have a good crop of healthy grapes - one of the biggest crops I have seen on our vines. This is true across almost all varieties, the exception being the Pinot Noir at our Rotherfield site where we have been fighting a war against Downy mildew all summer. The winner of this war is yet to be decided, but we have used copper fungicide (allowed under Soil Association rules) and many hours of thinning out the vines.

Picking is done by hand with fine secateurs, and we are always interested to hear from anyone interested in doing a day picking. We try to chose sunny days so the grapes arrive at the winery dry. We will have about 7 days picking spread through October. Please get in touch if you're interested.