August to October 2005
Author: Iain
I’m starting to write this update as we come to the end of harvest and I’m not entirely sure that it is a good idea. We’ve tried to do absolutely as much work as possible ourselves this year to avoid the costs of employing other people and as a result we’re well and truly shattered. On top of this the business side of things is depressingly slow (more later) so, all in all, we’re feeling a bit down.
My arrival back from England started with a bang though. I arrived
on a Saturday in the middle of August on the same day that the Duras
wine fair started! Two very long days talking to prospective customers
and explaining all 
about
our wines. We were a pretty good team though, especially Rebecca and
her friend Tanya, who put our flyers onto all likely looking cars and
then gave out samples of wine. It was pretty tiring though, not just
because we were on our feet all the time but I found it particularly
difficult talking to people all day, to many of them in French of course.
There were literally thousands of people there and we sold a reasonable
amount of wine on the day but, even better, had lots of visitors in
the following few days (one day saw 23 people visit us!).
In the Vineyard
The
decision to harvest each of the different varieties of grapes was, in
hindsight, a little easier than last year but still pretty stressful.
The Sauvignon Blanc grapes are always the first to be harvested (although
our young Merlot gave them a good run for the money this year) and after
a really dry and hot August the concern was that the grapes would overripen
and lose the flavours and acidity that are essential for the style of
wine we aim to produce. This was a little ironic as, last year, we were
on tenterhooks that they would ever reach full ripeness – such
is life I guess. 
We
took the decision to pick the first parcel on the 12th September. The
start of harvest is great, the culmination of the year’s efforts
in the vines, the winery is spotless and ready to start work on the
grapes and there is a great anticipation of creating the new wines -
so we leap into it full of enthusiasm. Our first vat is filled by the
end of the day and the initial alcohol prediction is 12.5% - ideal,
particularly as it will increase during fermentation – and the
acidity seems to be fine too. The process of harvesting has become well
organised after last year’s ‘practice’ – José’s
team of 
pickers
know what to do, we use the quad bike and trailer to keep small quantities
moving to the winery at a high speed and at the winery Jack and myself
handle the reception of all the boxes. This involves emptying all the
boxes onto the conveyor belt and making a final check for any imperfect
grapes – by the end of harvest I’ll have lifted around 46
tons of grapes, one of the reasons we feel so exhausted! Generally we
can cope with things but when harvest happens on consecutive days it
really is tiring. Mind you we’ve a lot of help this year from
friends - Jen and Andy, Chris and Annie and family - Dad, Aunty Jean
and Uncle Dave, 
Laurie,
Gav and Ondy – all worked really hard to help get us through the
harvest time and it was really appreciated. The other ‘help’
that we had this year was from a sort of exchange trip that the local
area runs with a catering school in Belgium – we were really lucky
that Kirsten stayed with us for a week or so, she was a great help but
the extra assistance of some of her school friends – pleasure
though it was to have a large number of 17/18 year old girls around
- during one of our harvest days was somewhat marginal in its impact!
We cut off the grape bunches using some pretty sharp grape-scissors
(very fine secateurs) and I start the day off by trying to scare all
of our visitors about the damage they can do to your fingers. This has
not been terribly effective this year even though Jack says that I’ve
gone a bit OTT describing the ‘horrific injuries’ I’ve
seen. The list of wounded this year includes;
- Antonio (one of Jose’s guys who manages to cut himself every time!)
- Jack (tut, tut)
- Andy
- Gav
- At least two of the Belgian students
- Ken (who visited after harvest but managed to shut his thumb in the winery door)
There is much concern in the area about the high levels of potential alcohol, particularly for the red wines this year (the worry is that the result will be wines that are unbalanced), there are worrying stories of people harvesting grapes at 15%, while all of ours remain in the vineyard so we double and triple check our sugar tests and all seems reasonably normal so we wait a bit longer for full physiological ripeness. In the end our harvesting dates are as follows;
12 September - Sauvignon Blanc
16 September - Sauvignon Blanc
17 September - Sauvignon Blanc
26 September - Young Merlot
4 October - Cabernet Franc
5 October - Merlot
7 October - Old Merlot
14 October - Young Cabernet
17 October - Old Cabernet
All our red wines register less than 14% at harvest and in spite of a little rain before the Cabernet Sauvignon are picked, all are as ripe as we could have hoped for. The signs are that this could be a good year, particularly for the red wines.
There are few more harvest-related pictures here.
The Wines
Well, we now are the proud owners of two vintages of Chater – although the 2005 versions are only a few weeks old.
Stepping
back to early September, we finally managed to successfully bottle our
first red wines and our Oaked Sauvignon Blanc. On the whole the bottling
went well although we subsequently found a couple of bottles that had
a capsule but no cork! As you can imagine this resulted in quite a mess
and required a number of boxes to be repacked as a result of the subsequent
leakage. Silly but we couldn’t resist opening bottles immediately
to give them a try. The Merlot/Caber
net
was by far the best – seeming to have actually improved from being
bottled. The 100% Cabernet (we bottled just 200 cases of this separately
as a bit of an experiment) was very tannic but we felt would be good
for future drinking (a couple of years we think). The Oaked Sauvignon
was disappointing, nowhere near as aromatic as we remembered it in the
vat – even more so because the bottling process meant we lost
about 100 litres of it, making our total only 100 cases (even though
it says 120 on the labels!). Happily the Oaked Sauvignon subsequently
recovered from the shock of bottling and is now opening out into a very
interesting wine. So we now have Rosé,
Sauvignon, Oak Aged Sauvignon, Merlot/Cabernet and Cabernet Sauvignon
available.
Fermentation has not been straightforward this year due to the high alcohol content of the red wines – which has somehow risen to 14.5% for our old Merlot and as I write there is still one vat of Merlot that is yet to finish (along with the last Cabernet but that was harvested later and the specific gravity is still falling at a good rate). This has required some tricky operations with the heating/chilling system.
Small diversion about temperature control: A pretty dull subject but really essential – fermentation generates a lot of heat that can destroy the fruitiness of white and rosé wines and cause too much extraction of tannins in the reds. Last year I hooked up some pipes to the vats, chilled some water with our refrigeration unit and pumped it around the vats using a small garden pump – pretty basic but reasonably effective. This year I’ve done much the same thing but the chiller and the water reservoir are now located outside the winery (to avoid the exhaust of the refrigeration unit warming the whole winery and therefore fighting against itself) AND, a major innovation, a flow-and-return setup for the pipes to the vats (rather than individually linked to the reservoir) and, wait for it………taps…….so that I can switch on/off individual vats without having to disconnect them from the chilling circuit. Still very basic but I feel a small sense of achievement and, in fact, the setup proves much more effective than last years’.
Anyway, back to the subject, the trickiness was due to the need to keep the rosé below 18° during fermentation (the whites had already finished) while warming up the reds to 25° to help them finish fermentation. This involved repeatedly warming and chilling the water reservoir to juggle the temperatures – with around a ton of water involved this will no doubt have a significant impact upon next month’s electric bill!
Naturally,
immediately after harvest there is a load of work to do in the winery
and one of the biggest jobs is the emptying of vats and taking the juice
off the grape skins. This has been particularly troublesome for us this
year and we’re beginning to think that we’re jinxed –
every time we emptied a vat something went wrong. The problems seemed
to be different each time; difficulty in getting the free-run juice
out of the vat meant we had to put virtually everything though the press,
too many skins to fit in the press, the juice/skins too viscous making
it impossible to press, the wheel falling off the crusher-destemmer
a
s
we moved it out of the way before starting, a major leak in the connection
of the pump to a pipe, the complete failure of an attempted new method
for getting the juice out before pressing and, worst of all we left
a valve closed and started pumping resulting in the failure of a pipe
seal and an explosion of skins and juice right across the winery. I,
of course, was (a) to blame and (b) the closest. Jack was cruel enough
to take a picture………cleaning up afterwards was a nightmare.
To sum up views on the current state (from last years’ experience this is liable to significant change as the wines develop) of each of our new wines;
Sauvignon Blanc: Possibly slightly less aromatic and
slightly less acidic than last year but rounder and fuller.
Rosé: Very pleased with this so far, potentially
excellent – even fruitier than last year. Only slight worry is
the level of alcohol (below 13% when harvested but is likely to have
increased during fermentation).
Merlot: Bit difficult to taste at the moment –
it needs racking to get rid of some sulphury end-of-fermentation flavours
but we’re waiting for the fermentation to finish. Could be very
good – jury out until after racking.
Cabernet Sauvignon: This is still on the skins so even
more difficult to judge. Fruity but quite high in tannin. Little bit
worried it may be a bit too tannic, on the other hand the Merlot could
possibly benefit from this extra ‘structure’ so could be
good for our blend.
Old Vines Merlot: Excellent. Full, round and fruity.
Looks to be carrying the 14.5% alcohol really well. Likely to be our
best red wine yet. Only 2700 litres of it though!
Business
Oh dear. While our direct sales continue to do better than expected we seem to be unable to really break into any ‘volume’ markets. Merchants and intermediaries all express their satisfaction with the quality of the wines but there is a huge reluctance to pay anything more than around 2 euros a bottle for reasonable quantities of wine. With our aims of high quality and low volume this price level is simply untenable and we’re left with a few options all of which seem pretty unpalatable;
- Sell below cost to generate turnover – obviously not very attractive.
- Hold out in the hope of a change in the market – pretty unlikely in the short-term.
- Change our philosophy towards higher volume/lower quality – not what we want to do.
- Build up our ‘direct’ market to a fully sustainable level – attractive but very difficult to do with the resources/time available to us.
Our thinking is that the ‘best’ approach is probably some kind of blend of the above. We also need to do something to enable us to bottle the 2004 oak aged reds and the 2005 white and rosé wines early in 2005. All in all, things not looking good at the moment and I’m looking at undertaking another contract assignment so that we can make ends meet……….
Daily Life
Our worries about the business side of things have put a bit of a dampener on daily life and to make things worse between two harvest days we were preparing dinner and there was a huge crashing noise that went on for what seemed like minutes – probably only a few seconds – a large set of shelves had fallen off the wall of the utility room. Glass everywhere and a delicious blend of virgin cold-pressed olive oil, cherry vodka (and the cherries that were soaking in it), vinegar and pickles all over the floor along with goodness knows what else. Awful, it must have taken two hours to clear up. I think we ate in virtual silence that evening.
Notwithstanding some recent injuries received whilst riding, Becks continues to love horses and we now take her to a really nice stable in Castillon la Bataille. It’s about 40 minutes away, bit of a pain, but we share the driving with one of Rebecca’s friends’ mum. Rebecca likes it so much that she spent virtually the whole of the October half-term there. Even preferring to go there to ‘watch the horses’ when she wasn’t riding – weird.
During harvest times we always prepare a lunch for the pickers and it has felt as though we’ve been perpetually preparing for and clearing-up-after a very long series of parties. How the dishwasher has managed to cope I don’t know. The hob certainly hasn’t, we are now down to two rings, both of which only have one temperature setting that works, hot! The oven, now just over a year old, has also decided to throw a wobbly and heats on a rather erratic basis. So we now add cooking on to our list of daily challenges.
To end on a high note, we had a hilarious evening just before harvest started with the (French) parents of one of Beck’s school friends. I can’t remember how on earth the subject came up but we began comparing the sounds made by different animals in English and in French, for example;
Cow – English: Moo, French: Meuh
Cockerel – English: Cock-a-doodle-doo, French: Cocorico
Duck – English: Quack Quack, French: Coin Coin
Frog – English: Ribbit Ribbit, French: Croa Croa
Sheep – English: Baa, French: Bêê
I guess you have to have been there but with a couple of glasses of wine, each of us trying out the other language’s animal sounds had us rolling around. A difference in language is one thing, but a difference in animal sounds as well? Who’d have thought it?
Jack's Bit
Some bits and pieces by way of an addendum:
All might not be going as well as we had hoped but good things do happen occasionally. For example at the beginning of August, Luis, José’s right hand man, called round just to take a walk through the vines to see how things were going. His verdict: with some pride he said ‘he was very happy, the grapes were looking wonderful’. And from a satisfied customer: ‘My bank statement says that you have the money and my cellar says that I have the wine. The only problem is that 5 hours after picking up the two cases we can only find 23 full bottles. On the plus side, I can definitively say that not only does the red travel well, it also is an excellent partner to Fusilli with Red Pesto and Parmesan.’
And we have had lots customers calling at the door for tastings and tours of the winery. Iain is now more than well practiced at these! In general they are all incredibly positive for us, love the wines and go away armed with a few cases.
We had a photographer come to take photos of us during one of our harvest mornings. She said she wouldn’t need long as she had another appointment. But she arrived at precisely the worst moment of the day. Not sure if I should say this but Iain had just started a pump over on one of the cuves that was in mid fermentation when all of a sudden the juice start fizzing out over the top of the vat and running down the sides. So…once he had calmed down, we left Iain’s dad to clear up! The ‘photo shoot’ lasted about half an hour. Various shots were ‘set up’ including a most unlikely scene of Iain and I sitting under vine, open bottle of Rosé standing on the ground, glasses in hand, ‘enjoying a casual drink’. Oh really! We have yet to see the results but the photos were for a magazine article which is due to be published shortly.
Life has now returned to a more normal level, whatever that is. I realised just the other day that the calendar in the kitchen is still on September, so October has come and gone without us realising. (Profuse apologies to friends, possibly ex friends now, whose birthdays we have missed; will try and make up for this next year!) To prove that normality is slightly restored, I have even managed to take some washing off the line AND iron it on the same day rather than leave it all in the basket until no one has any clothes left to wear and I'm forced to iron something.
Sadly it is hard to derive any great pleasure from what we have achieved so far. True it has all been a great adventure, but at the end of the day we need to make a living, and as Iain said this just isn’t happening. With the prospect of Iain returning to the UK to work shortly and the family being apart yet again, it is difficult to muster up the enthusiasm for what is to come here. Apart from the continued attempts to make some sizeable sales, we have all the winter vineyard work to undertake. I have no idea how we are going to manage.
