Harvest is an intense time of year, when a year’s worth of growing comes down to days and hours of effort to make sure that we do justice to the vineyard. Now all of our fancy winemaking talk has to be turned into decisive action so that we can go back to waxing lyrical over our barrels of wine 😉

We’re just gearing up to pick our first grapes, and the good harvest nerves are setting in. Barrels are on order, crates are in the back yard ready to be dropped off at the vineyard, and the debate over precisely when to pick is a continual topic. As a friend succintly put it, the decisions we make now stay with us for years in the form of the wine that we are making now – no pressure at all then 🙂

Although we get really caught up in our own expectations of what we are capable of doing, we still have to be sensitive to what the vintage is trying to give us. You always start the year with an idealised vision of what is going to come out of it, which you then have to adapt to what really happens in the vineyard during the year. The great thing is that If you can adapt what is in your head to what the grapes are giving you, you can make the best possible wine out of that vineyard.