Pruning and Wine Update

Myself, Graham, Mary were joined for this Pruning trip by Mike Whitehead.  We arrived at Casa Orchidea on Friday 28th March 2014 to prune the grapes, to take a look at last years wine, and to meet our new helper, winemaker Giuseppe Morelli.

Giuseppe is the young winemaker at Casalis Douhet, and has offered to help us going forward with our winemaking efforts.

We are extremely excited to have Giuseppe on board helping us.  During the weekend we actually got to taste 3 of Giuseppe's wines;  a Passerina, Ribona and a Passito.  All 3 were really excellent, so we now have a benchmark to aim at.

Giuseppe arrived at Casa Orchidea on Saturday morning together with his friend and colleague Francesco, and our friend Claudia.

Francesco is an Agronomist who has worked with several vineyards, and after some discussion we decided to change our method of pruning going forward from cordon cane to Guyot.

We tasted last years wines;  2 Roses and a Pecorino;  all looking good.  The Pecorino was slightly frizzante and Giuseppe explained it was going thru a Malolactic fermentation; we added 4 grams of Potassium Suplhite to try and stop this in its tracks.

Pruning was completed within about a day and a half, and as it was 18 degrees and sunny we took the chance to relax on Sunday afternoon with a Barbecue and some more wine tasting.