FIRST RACKING

Racked all 3 wines, adding Sulphite.

For Pecorino 2 grams, for Montepulciano and Sangiovese 1 gram of sulphite.

The wines look OK to me, anyway no nasty aromas and the condition looks fine.

Both the montepulciano and sangiovese are already looking attractive, starting to clear with a nice bouquet. The White is still very cloudy and very yeasty and looks like it has a long way to go.

WINE MAKING NOTES

Friday 24th September

We picked 101Kg of Pecorino, Brix 23.5, crushed, destemmed all, and sulphited at 2grams per 23 Kgs of grapes. Crushed at 5pm Friday, left overnight on skins at 14degrees.

Saturday 25th September

Pecorino, medium press at 9am Saturday to obtain around 50 Litres of Juice. Added yeast, Lalvin D47, immediately in stainless steel vat in cool room, temperature 14 degrees C. Hydrometer reading 90.

Picked Sangiovese around 2pm, 54 Kgs of grapes. Brix 23, 3pm crushed, destemmed around half, and sulphited at 2grams per 23 Kgs of grapes. Left overnight on skins at 14degrees.

Sunday 26th September

9 am medium press Sangiovese to obtain around 28 Litres of Juice. Added yeast, Lalvin D47, immediately in stainless steel vats in cool room, temperature 14 degrees C. Hydrometer reading 86.

Around lunchtime added 2 grams per gallon yeast nutrient to the Pecorino and Sangiovese.

1pm, looked again at Montepulciano and checked Brix. Decided to pick as Brix had risen to 23. 1pm picked 91.7 Kgs Crushed, destemmed around half, and sulphited at 2grams per 23 Kgs of grapes. Left for 2 hours on skins at 14degrees, then gentle press to obtain around 50 Litres of Juice. Added yeast, Lalvin D47, immediately in stainless steel vat in cool room, temperature 14 degrees C. Hydrometer reading 90.

GRAPE HARVEST

Here is an update, 22nd September

Pecorino

Brix at 23.5, Acid approx. 8-9 ppt. The acid maybe on the high side, but I dont want higher brix so I think we should go with this.

Montepulciano

Brix at 22.5, Total Acid at 6.5 ppt. These still have a little way to go, the berries look fine, and some are still changing colour, so I plan to let these hang a while longer.

Sangiovese

Brix at 23.0, Total Acid at 7 ppt. Although the acid is on the high side, some of the berries are starting to shrivel, and as these are for Rose, I think we should pick.

Note; I have a very primitive acid testing kit, so I am not sure how reliable these numbers are Need a proper Ph tester for next years vintage.

BRIX UPDATE

Wow what a difference ten days makes !

Just checked the Brix readings this evening, and the results are very surprising;

Montepulciano, Brix 15.4 so a reasonable increase during the period. Pips, still very green,.

Sangiovese, Brix 16, so a very small increase. Pips still very green, hint of brown.

Pecorino,Rows 3 and 4, Brix 16.5, wow what an increase, now I do believe this is an early ripener ! Pips, some green, but more brown.

GRAPE SUGAR UPDATE

Just sprayed again today, albeit more lightly than previous sprays, using only 80 litres total. The vines look very healthy, and still showing reasonable amount of fruit.

The weather this past week has been very mixed, temperatures dropped right down to around 20 degrees, with quite a lot of rain, altho it looks set to be fine and to warm up now.

Montepulciano

Starting to turn red, and the berries have definately swollen. Brix at 13 today, which is a dramatic increase in 8 days.

Sangiovese

Starting to turn red, and the berries have definately swollen. Brix at 15 today, which is a good increase in 8 days.

Pecorino Row 3 and 4

I think the berries may be just starting to swell slightly, altho they are still very small, not much more than half the volume of the red grapes. Strange Brix reading, with Row 3 showing Brix 11, a very good increase on last week, Row 4 showing Brix 7, which does seem strange. Lets see how these develop over the next two weeks.

SUGAR CONTENT

Just got my new Refractometer !

The grapes still have a long way to go before they are anywhere near ripe.

The Brix readings are very low, Sangiovese just about has a Brix reading of 10, whereas the Pecorino and Montepulciano are barely at 5. We have had about a week of very poor weather, but it seems like it is warming up now, so I will be keeping a very close eye on how the grapes develop in the next couple of weeks.

GRAPE SPRAYING

Sprayed again yesterday, using a mix of Crittovit and Ramedit Combi, 60 grams of each per 18 litre pack, I managed to get thru 5 packs.

The grapes look good, despite the hail damage, I think we could have a good crop yet.

Lots of fruit on all rows, with Montepulciano leading the way, followed by Pecorino Row 4 then Sangiovese, then Pecorino Row 3.

The berries are however still pretty small, I hope they will start swelling soon !

GRAPE SPRAYING

Sprayed again today, using a mix of Crittovit and Ramedit Combi, 60 grams of each per 18 litre pack, I managed to get thru 6 packs.

The grapes look good, despite the hail damage, I think we could have a good crop yet.

GRAPE AND SPRAYING UPDATE

Sprayed again today, using a mix of Crittovit and Ramedit Combi, 60 grams of each per 18 litre pack, I managed to get thru 6 packs.

Grape Update

Montepulciano

Absolutely lots and lots of fruit, the berries are just starting to swell. My only concern is that the canopy is very dense, I definately left too many buds on when I pruned these.

Sangiovese

A middle section of the row has a lot of fruit that is starting to swell, but a lot of the vines have a small amount or no fruit. It looks to me like these might be better cane pruned. The canopy looks good though and is not too dense.

Pecorino

Reasonable quantity of fruit on both rows, although I think probably more on the cane pruned Row 4. Again the canopy is very dense on both cane and spur pruned rows, and probably needs more thinning.

GRAPE UPDATE 23RD JUNE

Weather Update

For the first three weeks of June we have had very hot and dry weather, but on the 21st it poured for 24 hours, and the temeprature dropped from high 20's/early 30's down to well below 20 degrees. Its just starting to warm up again now, probably low to mid 20's today.

Montepulciano

Huge number of bunches, but no swelling yet

Sangiovese

Small number of bunches, some looking very large, and these grapes are just starting to swell now.

Pecorino Row 3

Small number of bunches, but no swelling yet

Pecorino Row 4

Large number of bunches, but no swelling yet

GRAPE UPDATE 20TH JUNE

The Vineyard is looking really promising at the moment. the Grapes have flowered, and we are in the early stages of fruit setting, most of the vines now have small bunches of early set grapes, a small number still have bunches of open flowers.



The initial fruit set on the Montepulciano looks huge, as does the last row of Pecorino, with the middle two rows, Sangiovese and Pecorino looking like the crop will be more modest.

NEW SPRAYING REGIME

Sprayed again today, using a mix of Crittovit and Ramedit Combi, 60 grams of each per 18 litre pack, I managed to get thru 5 packs, thats 90 litres of spray on the Grapes. Just after I finished it rained but fortunately it was only a light shower !

MORE SPRAYING

Sprayed the grapes again today, Sunday 6th June.

They are looking fine at the moment, big green leaves, lots of growth, no obvious problems. Sprayed with Mix of Ridomil (250 grams per 100 litres) and VISIR Pencotech (35-40 mls per 100 litres), all 4 rows, it took about two and a half hours. One spray pack (18 litres?) did 1 row, so in total sprayed around 72 litres.

VINEYARD WORK EARLY JUNE

Started work on the vineyard on the 30th May, it had been just over 3 weeks since my last visit, but wow, what a change. There was a great deal of growth on the vines, with shoots all over the place, and the vineyard looked generally very untidy and in desperate need of tending.

The growth on the vines in the last 3 weeks had been tremendous. After spending about 10 hours working in the vineyard to try and tidy it up, with plenty more work required, my first impressions on the different grapes are as follows;

1. Montepulciano

The least vigorous of all the vines, the growth was short (shoots up to 24 inches), stocky, but very dense and healthy. The grapes are showing a very good set of flowers, with flower clusters forming on each of the 4 buds. I think next season would be wiser to limit each arm to a maximum of 4 spurs, 4 buds each. The weight of some of the shoots had shifted the spurs so they were pointing down, and this took some effort to sort out, with some small shoot breakage, although it was time consuming it wasn't really a problem. Spent quite some time thinning out the canopy. These vines look good.

2. Sangiovese

Longer shoot growth than the Montepulciano, also very healthy looking. Shoots much longer, (2 - 3ft) but the growth not dense, showing a good amount of flowers, but nowhere near as much as the Montepulciano. These were quite easy to tie up and sort out, it was noticeable the great variation between different vines of the different quantity of flowers. The heaalthier looking vines in the bottom half of the vineyard had considerably less flowers that the other vines. LLots of big strong shoots with no flowers on at all, very strange, it is possible more buds will come, but surely not. The spurs seem to have shooted from the 3 & 4th bud only, and again on the stronger vines, the flower clusters only seem to be on shoots from the 4tf bud.

This maybe suggests that these vines would be better cane pruned.

3. Pecorino Row 3

These vines have demonstrated very vigorous growth, with very dense amount of very long shoots (2 -3 ft+). In the mid section of the row this proved to be a real problem, as the weight of the growth had pulled down the spurs into a tangled mess. This was very time consuming to sort out, and I had a great deal of breakage and loss of shoots on some of the vines. This row had least flowers of all the rows, and was the hardest to sort out. Clearly this should have been tackled around 10 days previously.

The vines in the bottom half of the vineyard had a small amount of flowers, with one or 2 vines having a considerable amount. Vines in the top half had very few, and on most of these vines the priority was to get the vine properly set up with to increase the chances of fruit next year as the trunk and cordons are still very immature.

4. Pecorino Row 4

These vines have demonstrated very vigorous growth, with very dense amount of long shoots. However, as the canes were tied, the shoots have grown fairly uniformly across the canapy. The 2 vines at the foot of the hill still look very sick, although they have some flowers. No idea what the problem is with these. Overall though, this row looks very healthy and has plentiful flowers, probably similar in number to the Montepulciano. This row was the easiest to sort out. These vines look good.

CONCLUSIONS ?

Montepulciano and Pecorino Row 4 look like the best vines.
Sangiovese would be better cane pruned (unless there is a late bud forming)
Tying up should have started a week to 10 days earlier
Cane Pruning looks better for the Pecorino, more flowers and easier to manage
There has been some sloppy pruning, too many buds left and too many pointing in the wrong direction

Next Steps

Need to finish tying up, and then some shoot thinning required in the denser canopies.

VINEYARD VISIT EARLY MAY

I spent 4 days working pretty much full time in the Vineyard in early May, from Monday 3rd to Friday 8th May,.

Growth was already well under way, with shoots already around 12 inches long.

During this week I had David's help for a couple of the days, between us we;

-hand weeded around every grape
-cleared unwanted shoot growth from the trunks
-tied some of the longer shoot growth onto the wires
-strimmed between the aisles
-put down 1 cup of fertiliser on every vine
-sprayed a mix of Ridomil (250 grams per 100 litres) and VISIR Pencotech (35-40 mls per 100 litres)

The grapes all looked very healthy, the exception being the 2 vines at the foot of Row 4, the Pecorino, which looked very strange. Compared to the other vines they had virtually now growth, the leaves being small and cup shaped. Very odd !

This was about 2 weeks too late for the first spring vineyard visit, would have been better to start this in mid April.

GRAPE PRUNING

Started Pruning the vineyard in mid February, and finished on the 1st March.

MONTEPULCIANO AND SANGIOVESE

Pruned both these rows the same way, to 4 bud spurs, max 6 spurs per arm. Most arms had either 5 or 6 spurs.

PECORINO

ROW 3
Pruned to 6 bud spurs, 3 or 4 spurs per arm.

ROW 4
Pruned to 2 canes on each arm, 12 buds per cane.

This was probably about 2 full days work in total.

HAIL

We had a disaster 4 days ago in the Vineyard.

On Sunday 4th July, a brief but incredibly powerful hail storm hit us around 3pm. It lasted around 30 minutes, but it was so severe, the hailstones were almost the size of Golf Balls. It came from nowhere.

The neighbour said they hadn't seen anything like it in 50 years. It actually smashed some of their windows. The grapes were smashed, with most of the bunches showing around 50% devastation due to the impact of the hail. And the vines themselves were buffeted by strong winds. There is a lot of work to be done to tidy the vineyard up and to get the vines back on track. Undoubtedly any crop will be severely limited, if not lost altogether.

What Wine with Fresh Truffles ?

Well of course, it does depend very much on the chosen Truffle dish.

But last weekend, I think we came very close to a near perfect combination. At a charity truffle dinner one of the dishes was a Black Winter New Potato and Green Bean Salad.

The recipe link is here;

http://www.trufflehunter.co.uk/truffle-recipes.php?id=13&folder_id=4

The wine we chose to accompany this was a Cono Sur Viognier 2009, and the combination was heavenly !