February
2005
Author: Jacky
Well, another watershed month - our first wine gets bottled and some fantastic news from Paris. Read on........
The Winery
Bottling
on the 7th has been the major event of the month, and an incredible
milestone. The bottling lorry arrived at 7 am. A juggernaut accompanied
by another large lorry containing a generator and a forklift! A fully
self-contained bottling line. It was incredible just to stand and watch,
which is in fact what we did for most of the time. Setting up took about
an hour or so and then they were off, filling 16,000 bottles in about
four hours. Fantastically impressive.
Production
line in action. Bottles are loaded on the left and then after a miraculous
series of operations whereby the bottles are sterilised, filled with
the wine and corked, they are dispatched to be loaded into crates for
transport.
Bottles
being loaded on to the production line courtesy of a large crane grab
taking about 30 bottles at a time. The bottles themselves are delivered
on palettes, each palette containing enough bottles for 10 hectolitres,
i.e. 1333 bottles.
Our
corks, loaded ready and waiting.
And here we are … CHATER Sauvignon 2004 coming off the production
line ready to be loaded into the transportation crates.
Due to our lack of storage space (currently) we decided that the bottling would consist of just filling the bottles and putting the cork in. The capsules and labels will be put on later. All our bottles were loaded into large crates, 34 crates in total, which almost filled a juggernaut, and were taken away to a storage facility in Libourne. They will be stored here until such time (very soon I hope) we have orders to fulfil, at which point they will be labelled, capsuled, boxed up and dispatched. So what are you waiting for - call us now and put in an order!
So there’s less wine in the winery. All the red remains, but we now only have our two 400 litres barrels of Sauvignon and about 10 hectolitres of Sauvignon left in a small storage tank which we plan to blend with the barrel aged Sauvignon. This will probably be bottled around the end of July, at the same time as our early drinking, lightly oaked red. Less wine, less work for now in the winery although we continue to stir the lees in the white barrels every other day, top up the barrels as necessary and of course taste the wines regularly to monitor their evolution.
In the Vineyard
The season starts again. Pruning was started towards the end of the month. We are being even more stringent in the vineyard this year. The number of buds left on each vine is being lowered even more than last year to reduce yield further and increase quality. We are also ensuring that none of the pruned branches, when tied down, will overlap. This will result in a more even spread of grapes, much less bunching and therefore further reduce any risk of rot (Iain: and hopefully reduce the amount of work later on for the Sauvignon Blanc – we spent hours and hours thinning them in 2004). Whilst painstaking now, this will hopefully save much time throughout the growing season. We have left it as late as possible as this is much better for the health of the vines – it reduces some of the risk associated with fungal diseases. José’s team is, as usual, entirely reliable and a major asset to us.
And so to business..
I have come to the conclusion that stretching before me is an endless paper trail and that I shall most likely become entwined in a never-ending paper chase. The less said about that the better I think!
We have had to face a variety of issues with the local Douanes, Customs and Excise, this month. Once again we are facing an uphill struggle trying to understand how the system works, not helped by the fact that one customs officer, when I asked him one seemingly simple question, asked me to let him know what the answer is, should I ever find out! No wonder it’s difficult. Customs issues, like most issues legal, are made all the more difficult because you don’t always know what to ask. Seems there is no one here who can just say to – this is how you do it! So trial and error. Of huge concern was the sudden realisation that we may not be able to have our wine here at our house to sell (much too long a tale to recount; the only saving grace being that as I am already grey I couldn’t get any greyer). Iain, who fortunately had come to one of the visits to the Douanes with me, would otherwise not have believed the tale that unfolded that afternoon. Several hours of discussion later we left exhausted and desperately upset. Happily and finally the issue has been resolved. It stemmed largely from the fact that our wine, once bottled, was taken to be stored elsewhere. We have resolved to build the second building sooner than we have envisaged to avoid any such issues in the future. More expense!
We have attended a number of meetings this month, most of which have been pretty tedious and always for the same reasons. Whilst there is always some content that is of interest, there is always an inordinate amount of waffle; there’s no doubt about the French love to talk! Of particular importance to us though is the proposal regarding the height of the foliage on the vines in relation to the planting density. Changes are being implemented in an effort to improve the quality of wine generally. For us this may mean that we have to let our vines grow a little taller. We are a little sceptical about this at present but we’ll see!
Daily Life
Well here we go again. We had always thought that Iain may need to go back to England and take up a contract or two to fund our madness; and he has! He left for a five-month contract this month. Even though we had talked about the possibility of this happening the reality is something else. This is not how it should be really. But, needs must, as they say. None of us is happy about this but we’ll get there. Thank heavens for Jose, who is making sure that everything here runs smoothly and helping me sort out any problems that arise.
We have had a night out though, at the Fete de St Vincent, St Vincent being the patron saint of vine growers, an annual event organised by the local vineyard owners. It began with a mass, to bless the new year in the vines, in a beautiful local church. This was followed by a considerable amount of ceremony, with the elders of the appellation dressed up in their robes. Finally the glasses were filled and the entertainment began. Many of the local vineyards had supplied wine for the event and it was interesting indeed to be able to taste their wines. Following this we decided it was about time that Nelly and Joel, the previous owners of our vineyard, were invited round to see what we had done. They seemed pretty impressed with what we had achieved which made us feel quite proud. After all, it is the vines they planted, for the most part, that are producing our wines.
Having finished the curtains for our bedroom we actually moved in to it on the 1st of the month. And as we have treated ourselves to a wall mounted flat screen so that we could escape, relax and watch a film, it seemed only fitting that we watch ‘The Great Escape’! Steve McQueen didn’t seem as dishy to me as he did when I was younger, but the film, aged though it is, was brilliant and a great take off of Chicken Run. But unfortunately there isn’t much time to relax. Fruit tree pruning continues. The garden also demands significant attention and it is very important to us that it is kept neat and tidy (job for me in March then!).
We have been bedevilled this month by what seemed like a never-ending series of ‘things going wrong’. Nothing major but every day there seemed to be problems; a leak in the cellar for instance that resulted in the need to drill a great big hole in the wall to get to the pipe (buried deep underground!) that was leaking; an error on one set of our labels that meant they had to be re-printed, etc…we end the month feeling really jinxed and begin to get a bit worried about doing anything new at all (so this is how Prince Charles feels….).
And last but by no means least…
some fantastic news arrived on the last day of the month. We have won a medal for each of the wines we entered in the Concours Général in Paris, one of the best wine competitions in France. Absolutely incredible.
CHATER
Sauvignon 2004 was awarded a Silver medal
CHATER Rosé 2004 was awarded a Gold.
After all the trials and tribulations of the last two years this a fantastic reward for us and more than we could have dreamt of. Apparently it’s pretty unprecedented for anyone’s first attempt at making wine. Even we allow ourselves briefly to be impressed with what we’ve done.
So there’s no excuse now – you just have to place
an order! Call me on; 00 33 553 646 714
