It’s been almost three months since you heard from us. "Not long enough!" did I hear you shout or was that just my paranoia…
Now you’re all back from your exotic holidays, I thought you might like an update on what’s been going on here at All Angels. BTW very disappointed I didn’t get a single postcard from any of you – how am I meant to holiday vicariously without one? I know “every day is a holiday at All Angels…”
The vineyards burst into life in June. Over the last three months, we’ve gone from bud burst, to flowering, to fruit set and now we’re into veraison when the grapes start to turn in colour and ripen. Everything is quite late though: about 2 – 3 weeks behind so I suspect our harvest will still be going in November this year. It’s the same story across the country and we are all a little bit nervous.
We are cutting off grapes at pace at the moment both to improve the chances of the remainder ripening fully and to keep the stress off the vines. To start with it can be a little disheartening discarding perfectly healthy grapes we’ve spent so much time and effort growing but it is essential as we only want the very best fruit for the very best wine. QbV (Quality before Volume).
Generally, I’m happy with how the vineyards are looking: largely clear of disease and the grapes look healthy. There are some horror stories coming out of Sussex in particular about a poor fruit set and significant mildew – some producers have lost entire varieties: this is why we drop fruit to destress the vines and reduce the disease risk.
There are some downers, of course: we’ve lost some Pinot Gris to necrosis caused by bad weather when it went through fruit set, parts of the Chardonnay in Enborne Main are a little thinner than last year and there’s a bit of “hen and chicken” in the Rondo (grapes of different sizes and development) but this is more than balanced out by the strength of the Meunier, Pinot Noir and especially the Chardonnay in the Church Block.
A big shout out for the Volunteers again who’ve done a great job tucking in the vines growing at a good 30cm a week and leaf stripping: they never fail to impress me. Most recently, they’ve been helping putting up the bird nets to protect the Rondo – the blackbirds weren’t quite so happy with that!
Take care for now,
Mark