Why do we make wine? For the same reason we tried to play the violin. Both give us an idea of just how difficult it is to do either. So whether we're listening to Heifetz or drinking a great wine we can judge the achievement with more understanding.
This year started with a disaster. Not the only one as we shall see. Inspired by some pruning on You tube, we cut back our vines much more drastically than ever before, assuming you couldn't go hard enough.
Wrong. Last year we over-produced and ended up with more wine we could ever drink or give away. So the drastic spur pruning of 2026 was designed to limit quantity too. In that we were over successful.
Another wheeze was to break up the compacted grass in the avenues between the vines. This was not cheap and had no discernible effect.
As usual we bought more vines to plug the many gaps. Why are we not better at growing grapes? So many young vines die at our place. Maybe we are not there often enough to keep the baby vines watered enough? Is our soil (heavy clay) not appropriate?
Anyway, this year we chose Souvignier Gris and Cabernet (Cabaret) Noir because we have been happy with the wine we have made from these grapes even though tiny in quantity.
Then real disaster struck: deer. They decimated the young shoots on many vines. Eventually these grew back but with leaves only - no grapes.
Then came the heatwaves, drought and hosepipe ban. People assumed this must be good for the grapes but it wasn't.
Of the grapes we had, many bunches suffered from Millerandage.
Others never ripened for lack of water we assume.
Later we discovered that you were allowed to water young trees under 3 years of age. Maybe the same would have applied to vines? We are not commercial so that was a moot point. Anyway, we didn't bother to find out because to be honest, it was so hot we didn't have the energy to do any work in the vineyard. We didn't even eat outside; just stayed indoors.
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| John Parish with his Acolon. |
So when it came to picking our grapes we could see there was very little there.
We were going to buy in grapes from Italy as we do every year but we thought it would be an idea to buy grapes from local vineyards if we could. We have tried this in the past but no one was interested in letting us buy small quantities if at all.
This year through an outfit called 'Wine and Grape Trading UK' we found a grower in Cambridgeshire who had some Acolon vines. This gentleman is called John Parish and his vineyard is an adjunct to his large wheat farm near Little Thetford north of Cambridge.
John used to make his own wine but now sells to wineries nearby. One of these is called Mount Farm Vineyards and is located in Suffolk. Their wines which come under the name 'Ark' include Riesling, Bacchus, Chardonnay, Ortega and Pinot Gris.
So John doesn't have a use for his Acolon any more and being a super-generous man, offered to let us have his grapes if we would come over and pick them ourselves, with his help as it turned out.
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| Treading the Acolon |
Now Acolon is an interesting grape; a Blaufraenkish/Dornfelder cross. We had tasted Acolon grown in the Czech Republic and found it really good.
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| Acolon kept on bubbling for a long time |
So we were delighted to take home 6 boxes of John's beautiful grapes which have been bubbling away in a carboy for a record long fermentation. We're not sure how the finished wine will taste but let's see.
This year, for the first time, we were able to buy Barbera from one of our two regular suppliers. Malvasia was also on offer for the first time in years. so these were the Italian grapes we bought.
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| Malvasia, an excellent grape. |
Our Malvasia had been a success. That was in 2018 we think. We have one remaining bottle of that vintage. It will be interesting to compare it with this year's vinification.
Barbera has never been one of our favourite varieties. We have never seen the attraction and have come to avoid it even in blends when we can.
Making wine with Barbera however explained why so many are fans of the grape.
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| Barbera |
For a start, it is a beautiful variety to look at. It has relatively small berries and the bunches are compact without being too tight. The trodden grapes are of a beautiful dark colour when macerating and we made a surprisingly large volume of juice from the 6 boxes we had bought.
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| That's about 32 litres of Barbera. |
We'll be interested to find out if our Barbera is any better than the dull wines we have tasted of this grape.
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| Honestly!! |
Meanwhile, back in our own vineyard the birds had been busy among the Cabaret Noir vines. So we salvaged what we could of the remaining grapes and picked the other red grapes at the same time to deprive them of what remained.
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| Our entire crop of red grapes fitted in to three of these boxes. |
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| That's all folks! |
That was not a lot: a record low.
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| The white grapes. The pink ones are Souvignier Gris btw. |
Strangely enough the birds hadn't started on the white grapes but as you can see, quantity was pathetic for these too. Two or three weeks previously we had picked Solaris which is always earlier.
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| Solaris before racking |
From that variety we made 5 litres.
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| Loaded |
Very much on the plus side, we had been the recipients of unparalleled kindness - equaled only by Our new friend John Parish (see above) - from certain wonderful people in Spain.
The story goes like this. In the years before Brexit, our grape supplier, the Wine Grape Club of Hatfield used to import Spanish as well as Italian grapes. These came from Frutas Pascual near Valencia. Post Brexis, this supply dried up due to import difficulties. Not ones to take this lying down we managed one year to obtain some Garnacha direct from Frutas Pascual but this involved some jiggery-pokery and was not something on which we could rely on an annual basis.
Then, we had a brainwave. We had met a wonderful person, Vicente Todoli, at a special Citrus dinner at the Toklas Restaurant in London. Todoli has a citrus farm in Palmera not far from Valencia. Toklas has regular shipments of citrus from there so we thought we might be able to arrange for Pascual to deliver a few boxes of Garnacha (we had been unsuccessful with their Tempranillo) to Todoli for inclusion in their shipment to London.
Vicente Todoli kindly agreed to this. Then disaster struck. Frutas Pascual went out of business. So the next plan was to try and find another source of Valencian grapes to consolidate with the Todoli shipment to Toklas. We spent some time trying to find a suitable grower but that is not easy from where we were sitting.
Then a miracle happened; Vicente, who is nothing if not well connected contacted the most distinguished winemaker of the area, Rafael ('Rafa') Cambra of Bodegas Rafael Cambra who agreed to provide us with about 50kg each of his two most rare varieties, Arco (aka Arcos) and Forcalla (Forcallat).
Rafa's Arcos was known to us and is written up in this blog following a previous visit to Valencia when we bought a bottle of his 'Casa Labor' Arcos from the venerable 'Baviera' winemerchant in Valencia. We later discovered that Arco/Arcos is a synonym for Moristel but that didn't matter because Moristel itself is a rare variety (not to be confused with Monastrell which is Mourvedre).
As for Forcalla/Forcallat we had had a very pleasant bottle of this from Bernabe Navarra (Alicante). Navarra is credited with having brought back Forcallat in his area. The same can be said for Rafael Cambra.
And so it was that with the enormous help of Cristina Gimenez at the Todoli Foundation, Vicente Todoli himself and Rafael Cambra, we received the Arco and Forcalla grapes at Toklas.
Shortly before, we had been told that these grapes were being gifted by Rafa Cambra. This is more than generous because he grows so little of these varieties.
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| Getting ready for destemming |
Getting the grapes to our 'cantina' we felt enormously privileged to be able to say we were one of the very few people in the world to be making wine from Arco and Forcalla.
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| Arco |
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| Forcalla |
These grapes were 100% organic but the amazing thing was their beautiful condition. There was not one substandard berry, no insects, no damage.
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| Arco and Forcalla ready for treading. |
We de-stemmed these grapes and trod them ready for a 7 day maceration. You can see their difference between them: Arco in the red trug, Forcalla in the green one.
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| Arco macerating |
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| Forcalla. |
Rafa had advised on 6 - 7 days maceration for the small quantities. Normally there would have been a longer maceration.
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| Arco (aka Arcos. Also Moristel). |
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| Forcalla (aka Forcallat). |
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| Souvignier Gris |
and this was the extent of our Souvignier Gris.
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| Field blend of white grapes we're going to call Gemischter Satz |
The rest of our white grapes made about 12 litres of wine. We are considering bunging in, sorry - blending Solaris, Souvignier Gris and what we used to call 'Gli altri' all together into one, maybe called 'Gemischter Satz' this time instrad of 'White Field Blend.'
Actually, we could bung/blend the Souvignier Gris with our red field blend which we are thinking of calling 'Passetoutgrain' because the Souvignier has a pinkish hue and anyway we like the idea of adding a bit of white or pink to red wine.
In case all this doesn't sound too tragic there was another story which was a disappointment.
One of our suppliers had been touting Moscato Rosso as one of his offerings already last year and we were very sorry when he informed us that it wasn't coming after all. This year we saw Moscato Rosso again on his list so we hurried to book and pay for our allocation. We planned to vinify this dry as we had done - successfully we might add - with some straight Moscato last year.
Again it looked as if the Moscato Rosso wasn't coming this year but then out of the blue we were told it had arrived. So we hurried along to get our six cases.
On receipt, the grapes tasted nothing like Moscato anything. Famously, Moscato is known as the only grape whose wine tastes of - grapes! Clearly this was not Moscato Rosso. We raised this with the importer and suggested his supplier has mis-labelled the boxes. He said he would make enquiries about this. We are not holding our breath.
So what grapes are these? They looked familiar and even more so on crushing. Sangiovese! We had made Sangiovese before. It is quite distinctive. Much lighter in colour than you would have expected. We were not too unhappy at having to make Sangiovese.
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| Sangiovese with 6 days' maceration |
We thought we would have some fun with it by macerating some twice as long as the rest. So far we can't detect ant difference in taste but time will tell.
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| Sangiovese - 12 days' maceration |
One more vinification was hoped for: Cornita. We had made a wine from this obscure Romanian/Moldovan grape last year and it had turned out quite well but our friend Liviu Robu who had made the grapes available to us told us that his source had said their Cornita wasn't good this year and put us in touch with a compatriot who is bringing in another variety. We are waiting to hear what.
To be continued...
