Newsletter No 2, May 2002

Welcome to the Spring Newsletter from Rentavine Club. This is the second edition and covers the period from February to May. In this issue we have a report on the fascinating saga of the post banging and an up to the minute report on the bottling of the 2001 wines.

Writing this on 14th May we still have 6 rows of young Regent red grapevines in our new Millennium vineyard left to prune, and then all 20 rows need tying down onto the bamboo canes and the wires. We are also eagerly awaiting the contractor who is due to come and bang in the 400 posts which we have distributed around this 1.5 hectare vineyard. Last week a contractor arrived on his tractor with post banger hitched up behind. He explained that the weight used to bang the tops of the posts to force the post into the ground weighed 400 pounds! It gets raised by hydraulic power about 10 feet up into the air and then literally dropped onto the post which some brave soul has to hold into position vertically. After the first drop of this massive weight, which sees the end of the post disappear about a foot into the ground he can then retire to a safer distance. After 5 or 6 more bangs the post is rock solid and about 60-80cms in the ground. A vineyard requires one of these posts every 4 vines along the row. Such are the mighty forces of the wind that a 2 meter high leaf wall of a row of vines requires a very rigid trellis system of posts and wires to avoid getting laid flat in a gale.

As soon as the contractor arrived I said, "That tractor's more than 6 feet wide, isn't it?". I was concerned that the tractor might not fit between the rows of vines. "No, it's about that" he replied. "Have you measured it?" I asked in disbelief. You guessed it he hadn't. I checked with my tape measure - seven feet and a bit. No way would it fit between the vine rows. So, after banging in a few end posts at the bottom of Vineyard 1 he drove off leaving the job which I had set out to accomplish 6 months ago still undone.

It was back in November when I first contacted a man with a machine through the local farmer's machinery ring, which exists to help farmers share their equipment amongst each other. "Yes, I can do it ", he said, "£1 a post - I'll do it in March". Come mid February I rang him again "You still OK to bang in these posts for me next month?". He replied that he was and that it would be done about the 3rd week of March.

Meanwhile, I was having trouble obtaining the posts. I called him back to put the job off for 3 weeks. I had ordered 150 chestnut posts peeled and pointed with minimum 4" Tops from 2 different local wood cutters, due for delivery early March, Price £1.75 per post. In the end neither of them could deliver, both let me down.

I then made contact with the owner of a huge pile of old hop poles which I had seen from the road when driving by. Hop poles, in good condition can made excellent vineyard posts when cut in half and pointed. On closer inspection however, these were too crooked , too thin and too old. The owner did however, introduce me to another local wood cutter, who said he may be able to help by supplying freshly cut chestnut posts.

However, it turned out his marriage was on the rocks and he had little motivation left to take on the job I was proposing. All avenues seemed to be closing on locally grown chestnut. In desperation I contacted the local Farmers' Buying Group who use their buying power of several million pounds per annum to get good deals from suppliers. I specified 400 posts, minimum 4 " tops. The posts arrived.

I unloaded them and then realised they were labelled 75 - 100 mm. Back to the supplier they went and a new lot was delivered. When you are constructing a vineyard to last for 30 years, you do not want to have to replace posts before the end of the life of the vineyard. A 3 inch post could rot after 15-20 years, a 4 inch on the other hand should last 25 years at least. The posts were distributed around the vineyard using our vintage 1954 grey Ferguson tractor and small 4 wheel trailor. By this time it was mid-April. Back to the original contractor who was going to bang them in : "Got the posts and they are all in position, ready and waiting ", I told him on the phone. " Very sorry, I'm booked up solid for the next 3 months" he replied. I have edited out of this newsletter my response after replacing the receiver as "unfit for family audiences".

At the time of writing we have 2 possibilities. Either the mate of a local contractor who supposedly has a post banging machine attached to a dumper of width 6'6" will come, bringing someone to assist with holding the posts vertical and do the job this month or, alternatively we hire a machine from a well known vineyard in Kent who have agreed to hire it to us and bang the posts in ourselves using our narrow tractor. Because we are so behind with the vineyard work I am keeping my fingers crossed that the mate of James and his dumper driver banger materializes and can fit between the rows and does the job.

Until the posts are in place we cannot fix the wires for the vines to be tied onto. The vines are certainly rearing to go! We are expecting our first crop from these new red grape vines in October this year. Planted in 2000 they have made excellent growth and most of the plants are now big enough to carry half a normal crop. It takes 2 years for a baby vine to develop a root system and fruiting canes big enough to support a crop of fruit.

This year the buds on all the vines are well ahead of their development in an average year. Bud burst was around mid-April, a couple of weeks earlier than normal and most varieties are already showing leaves the size of a 50p piece. This is the stage when the vines normally get the first spraying of the season to kill off the spores of the powdery mildew fungus which over-winter in the folds of the dormant bud. After bud burst and when air temperature is about 20 C, sulphur based organic spray will kill them off.

However, before the operation can be carried out, we need to pulverize the prunings which have been cut off the vines during the winter. This is done by a tractor driven mowing machine with strong blades which shlashes up the vine wood laying on the ground into small pieces making it easier for them to rot down.

At this time of year the vineyards are all a mass of yellow flowers which come from the over-wintering green manure crop sown last August which is now flowering. A mixture of winter rape, winter rye, fodder radish and vetch. These plants help to maintain the fertility of the soil without using chemical fertilizers. The root action of these plants help to break up the soil and some help to put nitrogen into the soil which feeds the vines. In the next week or so the crop which is now 6 feet tall, will be cut and then turned into the soil where it will form humus and further food for soil micro-organisms and eventually the vines.

We will also be applying 3 tonnes of chicken manure pellets in the next couple of weeks to help boost soil fertility still further to try to stem the loss of vigour evident on some of the vines particularly in vineyards 1 and 2 and in places at Bodiam.

Vines do not normally need large amounts of fertilizer but where we are using straw under the vines to suppress weed growth, the straw robs the soil of nitrogen as it rots down leaving too little for the vines resulting in loss of vine vigour and reduced yield of grapes. To correct this we apply chicken manure pellets every 2 or 3 years.

Next week we will complete the bottling of the 2001 wines. As the wine-maker I am extremely pleased with the way this vintage has developed. When the fruit was picked I was concerned about the percentage affected by grey mould or "botrytis" which can give wines a slightly "off" flavour and lead to rapid oxidation from acethaldelyde. I was particularly concerned about the Rivaner and the Faber grape varieties which were about 50% botrytis affected. The young wine also tasted a little strange, so to counteract this, I gave the wine some contact with oak by immersion specially prepared smoked oak chips into the vat. The result is one that I am very proud of. The oak has masked the botrytis tone and given the wine a greater depth of flavour without being overpoweringly one dimensional 'oaky' in taste. There is complexity there without being instantly attributable to oak. Try it on your friends! The wine is our 2001 Late Harvest medium dry. It will be released at the beginning of English Wine Week on 1st June along with the 2001 Dry White. This wine gave me some concern in January as the acid had dropped away which meant the wine lacked fruit. Seeing as this is the main characteristic of English Wine this was concern indeed. I managed to lift the acidity by blending in half of the Reichensteiner Sparkling Base Wine which had a high acidity. This left the base wine low on acid which I made up by blending the Chardonnay into the Reichensteiner base wine. So the 2001 White Bubbly will be a Reichensteiner-Chardonnay blend, but there will, unfortunately, be no 2001 still Chardonnay varietal.

Bottling started a week ago with the Contract Wine which we make for other grape growers, some as far away as north Kent and Leicestershire! It will be completed next week when we bottle the long awaited Organic Black Cherry Wine as well as 2 exciting new products - a white Grape liqueur and a blackberry liqueur. All these products will be released in time for English Wine Week when we will have FREE Entry and lots of other special offers. We will be having a stand at the Heathfield Show on the 25th May 2002 as well as a stand in the Farmer's Market section of the Organic food & Wine Festival at London's Olympia during the last weekend of June. So do visit us there if you can't make it down to Sussex and visit us here and see your vines.

Best regards

Roy Cook