Silent Pool Rosé 2012

Earlier today I tasted our Silent Pool Rosé 2012, with Ulrich Hoffmann (the winemaker) and Stephen Skelton MW. In my opinion it's even better than the 2011 which, given the appalling weather last year, is a fantastic result. More importantly Stephen, who is an expert on English wines commented:

"Good fruit, nice balance with good acidity but not too agressive. A worthy successor to the 2011. Amazing considering what the year was like."

It seems that our decision to pick only the ripest fruit has really paid off and as a result we will be releasing a top quality wine that we can really be proud of. It will also be one of the first wines in Europe to be certified organic under the new EU regulations. Unfortunately, as we only used the very best grapes, supply will once again be very limited. We hope to release the wine in early May - details of stockists will be on the web site.

The Albury Wine Club

The Albury Wine Club is for local wine and food lovers who are interested in English wines, particularly those produced by Albury Organic Vineyard.

The club aims to provide an insight into UK viticulture, as well as the inside story on what’s going on at the vineyard. Members will have an early opportunity to buy the wine at discounted prices and be the first to receive invitations to wine and food events being held at the vineyard.

Membership is priced at just £50/year per person and includes:

• Two complimentary bottles of the award winning Silent Pool Rosé, as served on the Royal Barge as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. 

• 10% discount on all wines purchased direct from the vineyard.

• A free of charge members tour of the vineyard and a first tasting of the years vintage, prior to its release in May/June.

• The opportunity to get involved in the harvest in October.

• An invitation to the harvest party in November (free for all those involved in the harvest). 

• A quarterly newsletter and regular email updates. 

We will formally launch the club in April. Our first event will be a pre-release tasting of Silent Pool Rosé 2012 at the vineyard in early May; invites will be sent out to Founder Members only.

To register your interest click here.

We look forward to showing you around the vineyard and sharing some great local wine and food experiences with you.

The Vineyard in Winter

A snowy Albury Vineyard - photograph by John Powell

There's only one job that has to be done during the winter months and that's pruning, pruning and more pruning.

We use the "double Guyot"training method which means that the two fruiting arms from last year have to be cut back and two new fruiting arms have to be carefully selected for the coming year. We also try and leave two stubs near the crown, which should produce the fruiting arms for the following year. All the old wood has to be pulled out of the trellis and burnt so that any disease is destroyed. The pruning wounds are sprayed with trichoderma which helps to prevent disease and heal the wound.

We have 21,000 vines in the vineyard so that's a lot of work! Fortunately Alex is always ahead of the game. Having started well before Christmas she didn't stop for the snow and pruning should be pretty well finished by the end of this week. We will leave pruning some of the Chardonnay that are in the frost prone areas until March, in the hope that it will delay bud burst until after the risk of frost.

The next job will be to tie the fruiting arms to the trellis. This year we are going to try biodegradable ties.

Yeast - the X-Factor for Biodynamic Wine?

Recent studies at Stellenbosch University have suggested that variations in the aromatic properties of wine, from identical grapes harvested in the same vineyard, may be due to differences in the yeast composition within the vineyard. This is because the microbial species present on the berry may contribute to the fermentation process.

Whilst the same yeast-like fungus, Aureobasidium pullunans, known as black yeast, was dominant in all vineyards, the research supported results from other studies that biodynamic farming leads to greater richness of microbial diversity. In a conventional vineyard 11 species of yeast were found while 17 species were identified in a biodynamic vineyard.

Interestingly, “many yeasts with biocontrol potential” were found exclusively in a biodynamic vineyard, some of which are the natural enemy of botrytis. The authors speculated that this unique diversity could be as a result of the establishment of the natural enemies of different pests given the absence of pesticides and synthetic fungicides.

You can view the full study here.

2012 Round Up

It is often said that you learn most from difficult years - if this is the case then I'm now the fountain of all viticulture knowledge! 2012 wasn't a complete disaster for us but we will hope and pray that we don't get another year as bad for a long time.

The season started with a warm period which resulted in early bud break and we were woken by frost alarms no fewer than eight times in March and April. Fortunately the Boujies did their trick and we were able to prevent any significant frost damage. The weather was then cold and wet in May, June and early July, resulting in late flowering and very poor fruit set ... and some downey mildew to boot. The lack of summer sun meant that a lot of the fruit then didn't ripen fully and we ended up having to selectively hand pick the ripe bunches. Overall we harvested about 3.5 tonnes of fruit compared to the 15 tonnes we might have hoped for.

The good news is that we seem to have fared no worse than non-organic vineyards and the juice from the grapes we did pick is really good. As a result we are hopeful of releasing about 1200 bottles of Silent Pool Rose 2012 next May, less than we had planned but more than last year. We have decided to blend the sparkling base wines from 2011 and 2012 to produce a high quality fizz, which should be available for the summer of 2015.

We are now busy pruning 21,000 vines in preparation for a fabulous and sunny 2013.

 

The Vineyard in November

The vineyard in November

November is probably the only quite month in the year for a vineyard and it should be the time for a vineyard manager to take a well earned rest. For Alex this means she will have time to take her 500cc motorcycle test!

Having completed the harvest, the vines are winding down and there isn't a lot to do before we start pruning in December. Last week we sprayed the vines with a copper solution to kill off any disease and later this week Alex will drench the ground with compost tea to improve the fertility of the soil and return some of the nutrients that were used for the grapes.

Once all the leaves have fallen and the wood has ripened we will start pruning the vines. It's going to be quite a task this year as there are 21,000 that need to be expertly cut back, leaving the best canes to tie down for next years growth. Luckily we have December, January and February to complete the task.

Alex, cow horns and some dung!

Horn Manure in the making

Now that we are biodynamic we have started to make our own biodynamic preparations. One of the most basic is Horn Manure (preparation 500) which is made by burying cow horns stuffed with dung from lactating organic cows.

Biodynamics is probably the most advanced form or organic viticulture. "Bio" means life and "Dynamics" means energy. It is an holistic approach which harmonises nature's elemental forces of the earth (the soil), water (the vines), air (the weather) and fire (the sun). It also recognises that the phases of the moon have a significant influence on plants.

Earlier today we buried our first cow horns on the vineyard which will be left there over winter. Alex wasn't too happy that the dung was pretty fresh but none the less did great job of stuffing it into the horns! The horns are dug up in the Spring, the contents dynamised in water and then sprayed on the vines. The purpose of this preparation is to improve the fertility of the vineyard. It also connects the vines to the land to encourage a sense of terroir in the grapes and ultimately the wine.

It is difficult to understand how the small quantities we use can make such a difference, but just because it is difficult to comprehend doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Many great vineyards and wineries around the world are convinced by the biodynamic approach, including Domaine Leflaive and Le Roy in Burgundy, Coulee de Serrant in the Loire, Beaux Freres in Oregon, Hensche in Australia and Jean-Pierre Fleury in Champagne.