6th May 2003 NEWSLETTER - 6

(You are receiving this Newsletter as a member of Rentavine.co.uk Club. If you prefer not to receive any future mailings please see the unsubscribe instructions at the end of the Newsletter)

Growing Season Off to a flying start by Peter Scott, Vineyard Manager

Pruning and tying down completed on schedule

Last night I downloaded the weather forecast for the next 10 days. I was looking, in particular, for 2 things: rainfall and minimum temperature at night. I was pleased on both fronts (pardon the pun). No rainfall forecast for the next 3 days which means we can apply the first spraying of the year tomorrow. Secondly, and even more importantly, no night frosts forecast which means the first hurdle of the vine grower's year has been successfully overcome. A single night frost at bud burst can wipe out three quarters of the crop even before the growing season has got underway. We had just such a frost on 7th May 1997 - The day Tony Blair became P.M. - but I suspect any connection was co-incidental, wasn't it? We are green pacifists and since the Iraq War any gloss Mr. Blair may have had previously has lost its shine somewhat.

Politics? We don't even want to go there. Back to vine growing.

We are currently just about on schedule with the vineyard work. All 17 acres of vines have been pruned to leave just 2 or 3 fruiting canes (depending on the training system) and these have been tied on to the load bearing wires of the trellis system using "twist tie" (paper covered wire ties). Just a few more rows at our Bodiam Castle vineyard are left to "tie down" and they will get done this week. Pruning is actually the longest of all the vineyard jobs and goes on for best part of 3 months (January to March) . It can seem as though the job will never get finished. Here is the text of the Winter newsletter I wrote in the middle of pruning which was intended to be sent out to you at the end of January :-

"Some of you may remember the 'pruning for quality' missive from this time last year (2002). Well its that time again when the vines have to be cut back to prepare them for this years crop. In theory we have until early spring to complete the pruning so no need to panic. However, with 17 acres, which equates to roughly 130 rows of vines with about 100 vines per row and approx. 2 Minutes per vine, you can see that, unless you have numerous hands, there is actually quite a lot to do.

At the moment we have made good progress, getting through about half of the vineyard but we have had quite good weather. Of course, if it takes a turn for the worse the work will have to slow down or stop. We dont prune in a downpour.

Like last year, the most important aspect of pruning is the 'spur'. This is a cane cut down to about an inch so that two new buds are left which in turn will form two new canes which will replenish or replace the canes left this year when they are cut off next year.

Without the spur in the right place, the vine plant would soon be out of control. The main purpose of pruning is to keep each vine in its own 'space' on the trellis. It is also necessary to reduce the quantity of fruit produced by the vine. If left to its own devices it would over-crop and the plant would not have the leaf area required to ripen the fruit properly.

Oh well, back to pruning, only another 14 acres to go!" (Written Jan 2003)

Now Back to May, well April:

Last week we completed spreading fertilizer on all the vineyards . Last year our fertilizer spreader broke down irrepairably, so I was on the look out for a replacement. In January I went to look at some secondhand hop poles which I was considering buying, to cut in half and use as vineyard posts , as was done back in the 80's in our vineyard 2. As it turned out, the poles would have required too much extra work cutting, pointing and transporting, so it was decided not to buy them.

I did, however, notice a fertilizer spreader under a lean-to building nearby. When I got word from the workshop that ours was beyond repair, I rang up "on the off chance" to see if the fertilizer spreader might be for sale. It was! I bought it for £150 and the kind people from Lamberhurst Engineering who were coming here anyway to demonstrate their new hi-tech inter-row (under vine) weeding machine agreed to pick it up from the farm near Lamberhurst and deliver it here in time for us to use to spread 3 tonnes of smelly chicken manure pellets. Yes, very organic and very very smelly!

Other tasks in the vineyard during what we call the dormant season i.e. When the vines are not actively growing , includes repairs to existing trellis systems. This nvolves replacing broken posts, cross pieces and rusty wires. We also had to build a new trellis for the 2001 planting of young Regent vines in the Millennium Vineyard. Investment to date on materials alone for this 4 acre vineyard totals £20,000 which we are financing using a loan from Triodos Bank in Bristol, who specialize in financing ethical and organic projects. We have high hopes of a huge crop of black grapes for red wine from this vineyard come October! Next year there should be lots of high quality dark red Regent wine for sale. The tiny quantity of "First Growth" wine we made from our Regent grapes last year is truly outstanding - A really proper red wine , and organic, and grown in England! Watch out for it - Release date 1st September. There is only 350 x 50cl bottles so reserve yours early!

Lets hope the weather stays reasonably dry during flowering during end June/early July, so that the fruit sets properly and the little embryo bunches dont turn brown and drop off like many of them did last year during the deluge which occurred at that time. Having got over the frost hurdle, Flowering is the next one for the Vineyard Growing Season!

WINEMAKING -PRE BOTTLING ANALYSIS

One of the high points in the Winemakers year is when the analysis results come back from the laboratory when we can see for the first time whether the early procedures such as fining with bentonite clay to remove protein, chapitalizing to increase alcohol, malo-lactic fermentation on the reds to reduce acidity, have had the desired effect or not. The results for this batch of wines were spot on. The only modification we would need to make was a slight tweaking of the acidity in the Pinot Noir by the addition of a juditious amount of calcium carbonate (chalk) which both the Wine Standards legislation and the EU organic standards permit. Currently the 2002 vintage young wines are spending their last couple of weeks in the vats prior to bottling.

The whites and one of the reds have been fine filtered ready for the sterile filtration which occurs as part of the bottling procedure . The Pinot Noir and Regent have not been filtered yet. I intend bottling the Regent unfiltered if clarification proceeds satisfactorily, and the Pinot Noir will be filtered in the next few days. All the wines are also currently being 'stabilized'. This means checking sulphur dioxide (SO2) levels weekly and making small additionas as necessary so that the wines do not oxidise during bottling and have the potential for bottle aging afterwards. Sulphur Dioxide is an antioxidant, which prevents wine turning brown and aging too soon.

Corks for the bottling were ordered direct from our supplier in Portugal a few weeks ago and are due for delivery here next week. We use two supplieres for bottles, one from U.K. And the other, for our elegant tall bottles, is a specialist bottle manufacturer located in Bingen, Germany where we visited a few years back. Bottling is planned in for later this month. Approx. 20,000 bottles will be bottled in 5 or 6 days. Before the wines are released they will need a few weeks to recover from what we call "bottling shock" - all the stirring up that bottling involves, and they will then go on sale after we receive the printed labels sometime during the Summer. Last years grape quality was excellent and the young wines have developed well, so you can expect something rather special from the 2002 vintage!

PERSONALIZED WINE LABELS

We have just invested in a new colour laser printer and sotware to enable us to produce inhouse personalized wine labels to member specifications. Enquire at the vineyard or email rentavine@englishorganicwine.co.uk

Thats all for now, we hope the new season will go ahead as well as it started and wish you all a good few months till you hear again from us. Dont forget to make use of your FREE entry pass and visit us during the summer for Vineyard & Woodland Nature trail + Winetasting!

UNSUBSCRIBE: To unsubscribe please send your email address in an email to rentavine@englishorganicwine.co.uk with the word 'unsubscribe' in the subject field.