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| Chris Lisney Smith, genius of the Wine Grape Club |
It's that man again! Chris of The Wine Grape Club. His smile is justified. Until late in the day it was unlikely grapes could be imported this year. By some miracle Chris found a way through all Brexit related obstacles. As last year, only grapes from Casa Rubis in Puglia came through. Sadly nothing from Spain.
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| Cibi people Gina and Aldo |
The solution seems to have involved Cibi Market, a leading wholesaler of Italian food.
Cibi was very convenient to get to, just near the amazing Neasden Hindu temple. This was just as well because we had bought four different varieties of grape, Trebbiano, Sangiovese, Montepulciano and Uva di Troia which all arrived on different days.
Of all these grapes, Montepulciano was in best condition but strangely made less wine than the others despite coming from the same quantity of grapes.
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| Trebbiano |
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| Sangiovese |
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| Trebbiano |
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| Montepulciano |
Micro-vinifications from these grapes were later joined by micro and microscopic vinifications of our own grapes.
This year we hadn't seen our old enemies, the pheasants so we were hopeful of being able to let our grapes ripen. How wrong we were. On cue, as the grapes just started to ripen, those thieving connoisseurs descended on the vineyard. We were actually there when it happened and had to go out banging cans to scare them off. This actually worked but it was clear we needed to pick immediately.
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| Nice looking but not ripe |
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| Goldriesling |
The pheasants we eating each variety separately so we picked what they had started. This year we decided to make separate vinifications including Solaris, Goldriesling, Johanniter, Rondo and Regent and friends (a few diverse vines in the predominantly Regent patch). In past years we had thown everything together in Field Blends but that hadn't worked too well and a lot had to be thrown down the kitchen sink.
In the case of one variety, our Geisenheim Gm 8107-3 ('Bettina') pheasants got the lot when our back was turned. Most frustrating as we were looking forward to making a separate vinification of that.
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| Solaris |
What do you get when you make wine with unripe grapes? Sour wine. Solaris, Goldriesling and Johanniter juice tasted just a little bit sweet but dried out to make wine that was bordering on the filthy. We bottled the Johanniter which may serve as cooking wine one day, threw out the Goldriesling and put the Solaris in demijohns while the jury is out.
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| Gli altri |
We made a further wine from all the remaining varieties (Phoenix, Sirius, Souvignier Gris, Helios and GF 92-22-6 etc) pressing these grapes straight after our batch of Uva di Troia which had just come in, giving the juice a pretty pink tint. We called this beverage 'Gli altri,' a musical term meaning 'the others' when joining solo players.
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| Rondo |
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| Rondo fermenting |
It was a bit different with the reds. Our Rondo is alays the first to ripen and the pheasant bush telegraph hadn't registered that with the result that we had quite a plentiful crop of reasonably ripe grapes. The bad news is that we only have two short rows of Rondo. Leaving Regent and friends didn't work out so well becaudse the birds got many of them before us resulting in about the same quantity as for the Rondo despite many more rows.
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| Regent and friends |
We wanted to produce these separately but the Regent was only viable when blended with the Rondo so that is what we did.
Before bottling we wondered if we shouldn't add some Red Field Blend from last year. We had bolstered this up with nearly 20% Cabernet Sauvignon from Puglia which was too much. The idea was to combine the two vintages and see if a balance could be reached. In the end we decided to bottle the 2021 separately. We think this might be the right decision as the wine is acidic but not undrinkable. Served chilled with pasta it is not bad. Maybe it will soften with age? In any case we could always open a bottle of the 2020 at the same time as the 2021 and 'dilute to taste' as they say.
Next year we plan to net the most promising vines. It will be a huge faff and no doubt expensive but we are tired of growing grapes for the birds.
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| Sangiovese, Uva di Troia and Montepulciano |
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| Johanniter, Gli altri and Red field bled (Rondo, plus Regent and friends |
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