It’s a fresh, sunny afternoon out here, after a very hot week, the
hottest I’ve ever known. The Verniotte Merlot is all in, the only
thing left out there is the old vine for La Clarière. This comprises of 100+ yr-old vines that have stood the test of time, and always give very low yields with impressive structure and finesse. Most of this will end up going into our Presbytere cuvée, a 100-case limited release taking the best fruit from the vintage.
It is becoming quite apparent that we are witnessing an exceptional year with incredibly ripe fruit, packed with colour and intensity. Some of the tanks have come to the end of their 7-day cold macerations and are so ink purple it seems to stain everything. This much colour and we haven’t even started fermenting yet!
The other notable events of the week include my wife Kaye’s birthday, and the removal of Alfie’s testicles! (he's our faithful hound, by the way) Coincidentally they happened on the same day, but I assure you they were unrelated! Within his 1st year Alfie has already managed to get hit by a car and break his legin two places, whilst also managing to run away at every opportunity
and slowly dismantle Kaye’s shoe collection. It’s for his own good! As you can see, he's well on the road to recovery.
A lot of my picking crew have now left to go back to the UK, and it is now up to the remaining hardcore group to finish the job. But I would just like to thank Lindsay, John, Willis, Dan, Laura, Scott, Jenny, Phil, Helen, Paul and of course Mum and Dad for all their help. All they get is a free t-shirt but they've worked hard to make it a very smooth week for me and I can’t thank them enough for there help!
Looks like we might see some clouds next week but still can’t see any serious rain on the horizon!
H
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