Planting, spring 2019

Left hand block ready for planting with Soreli (white) Cab Noir red (right) was planted in 2018

The Brexit date of March 29^th suggested it would be best to take delivery of our new vines shortly before that date and have the planting done then. So we booked help for the end of March and tried to impress our suppliers how crucial it was to arrange delivery in time.

Easier said than done. The German suppliers, Rebschule Freytag were adamant that no delivery of 50 Blattner Cabernet Noir vines would be possible after Brexit whereas the French branch of Vivai Cooperativo Rauscedo seemed to be taking a very relaxed approach as if nothing could possibly hold up our order of 250 Soreli vines.

There could be no margin of error though because unless the vines arrived punctually our guys would have to be paid, stood down and re-booked at some distant time when they might have a free day.

Cabernet Noir soaking

The Germans were super-efficient with the vines arriving well on the early side. At this point we got a bit spooked and asked the French to send their vines the very next day rather than in the week following up to out planting. They kindly did so and so we waited. Freytag had advised us that we could store their vines in a cool dark place for as long as we liked. We wished we had known that previously. We would then have arranged delivery of all the vines at least another week in advance.

Days passed and our nails were getting down to the quick so we tried to track the French parcel. To our horror it had been sent by the French post office’s Chronopost service and was still stuck at the post office local to the VCR vine nursery. There is remained for another day or two so with just over 48 hours to go we beseeched the VCR to go to the post office, retrieve the package and send it by DHL Express or some similar service as soon as possible.

VCR kindly said they would do that so when the doorbell rang on the day before planting we gratefully received the delivery – only to notice it was sent by Chronopost. 

Calling VCR, they explained that they hadn’t recuperated the original package from the post office but had sent a second package with a further 250 Soreli vines by DHL and according to tracking, we would be able to obtain these from DHL the next day.

The 2 x 250 vine boxes of Soreli with the 50 vines of Cabernet Noir in the middle.

And so it was that instead of no vines, we ended up with 500 instead of 250. VCR were kind enough not to charge for the shipping of the second lot and to give us a discount on their price so we were happy to keep them even if we had no idea where we could put them.

Soreli soaking

After various contortions we took our planting expert’s advice and simply inter-planted the extra 250 vines.

We has read that this reduces the vigour and productivity of the vines but we reckoned on a certain amount failing to ‘take’ anyway so that is what we did,

Our expert had another surprise up his sleeve. Instead of digging a large hole and planting the vines in compost or at least a mixture of topsoil and compost, he simply bored a narrow hole in our clay-ey soil, inserted the roots pointing straight down and not splayed out as before and shoe-ed the earth back in. 

He says vines are tough like weeds and will grow even when bamboo poles are added to the tight hole and rabbit guards put in place. So far things are looking normal. He may be right.

So now we are quite the trailblaisers as far as varieties new to the UK is concerned withour red grapes predominantly Cabernet Noir and our white ones, Soreli – VCR’s take on Friulano: both no-spray resistant varieties.

Bamboo canes 'Made in China'

500 Soreli vines planted!