A Winemaker’s best friend.

Here we are in December and the year has flown by! It must be something to do with getting older as it seems like only weeks ago that we were planning our vineyard work and wine making for the year. It’s a nice time for us, the wine is safely in tank and the vineyard is  completely dormant and so we have winter pruning to look forward to in the new year but for now, it’s a chance to sit on the sofa in front of the fire. We do have one vital task though , recruiting a new vineyard dog.

Our dog Fred arrived one week before we planted the vineyard. He was just a year old and we were already his fourth owners. It wasn’t his fault, he was just a regular energetic young Labrador but through circumstance he was shuffled around between people and was completely untrained. Like all great dogs, he quickly became part of the family regularly entertaining visitors and stealing our thunder during vineyard tours. Sadly we lost him after a short illness in the summer and so we’re on the lookout for a new canine friend.  The qualifications required are being a good listener, coping with my singing in the vineyard, GSOH, rabbit chasing desirable but not essential . We will be holding interviews soon and the package includes accommodation in a comfy dog bed in front of the fire, a wage of dog biscuits and the occasional ball throwing based entertainment. Background unimportant but he or she will have big paws to fill.


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 tha
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 abashed even before rel
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