A Vintage Year Part 2.
Those of you with memories that go back as far as last September will know that I wrote in The Leveller about the potential for the 2018 English harvest and I’m glad to say, it seems that potential has been realised. You are never quite sure how things will turn out until you taste the finished wine but, winemakers with much longer memories than me are saying that it’s the best harvest that they have known in this country. What makes it great is that we got quantity and quality, anybody that was here on harvest day will attest that the grapes tasted amazing with real intensity of flavour. 
One question is, where will all this English wine go. The answer is that the big producers have been having to hold back on sales as they just haven’t had the stock and so this will allow them to grow both here and in particular, in North America which as a huge appetite for what we’re doing.  The futures bright and the future's fizzy!


Wine Tip of the month.
I think that I write this every year but, end of November/Early December is deal time. The supermarkets guess ( correctly) that if people buy wine early, they will drink it before Christmas and then buy more at full price just before the big day. They will be holding various buy 6 get 20% off deals and the trick is, to then link this with the loyalty points that they hand out this month on clubcards and the like which give additional discounts. If you time it right, you can buy under cost price.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Born to be Wild.

Image
Born to be wild. In life, we all like to have a bit of control over things. That reassuring feeling that everything will go to plan and while nothing is ever guaranteed, you expect things to turn out well. In the winemaking world, this is what happens when you make your wine with a commercial cultured yeast. The vast majority of wine is now made using strains that are pretty predictable and will do the job quickly without too much risk. This being the case, why did we decide last year to go back to the wild side and let our grapes ferment with the natural yeasts to be found in the vineyard? The answer is that there is research that suggests that no two  vineyards have the same finger print and so you are tasting the unique product of our environment. The process was pretty nerve wracking. A commercial strain does its job in a week or two but our indigenous Somerset yeasts were still slowly working away until after Christmas. The results? We couldn’t be happier. We think...
Read more

Glasses.

Image
I’m writing this in the continuous long Sunday afternoon that is the week in-between Christmas and New Year. The intake of food and drink at Higher Plot and at various relative’s abodes has been prodigious and the urge to write an article about further indulgence isn’t as strong as it could be. We don’t feel too guilty about taking advantage of the Slackmus period partly because the end of the holidays means getting our big coats on for the start of winter pruning and also, I’ve just read an article about the alcohol intake of one of the greats of the wine trade 90 year old Michael Broadbent’ His son wrote - "Though my parents were in the wine business they aren't big drinkers. Champagne for breakfast because orange juice is so boring without Champagne. Then nothing until lunch, except perhaps you'd be given Madeira because their coffee was so bad. But otherwise nothing except for a Bloody Mary. They'd then have white and red wine with lunch and Port after, but ...
Read more

1988 Priorat

Image
Last night I was drinking a great bottle of Masia Barril 1988 Priorato with some friends who had come to stay. I must have bought it some time in the early 1990's from the Moreno shop in Paddington. Still completely fresh with lots of Garnacha character.  One of them lived there at the time and said that it was great until Robert Parker discovered the wines and then it all went downhill. I think that the reality is that a group of well funded producers made a concerted and orchestrated attempt to be "discovered" and recognised as makers of the most expensive wines in Spain. The likes of Clos Mogador and Alvarro Palacios are excellent in a modern style meets exceptional vine stock kind of way but ,you can't help but think that being the most expensive was the motivation and the marketing tool. I've met Palacios and liked him (and his wines) a great deal and he always had a clear sight of what his message was going to be. He was completely un abashe...
Read more