Author: Ben

After the hail storm in July last year the grapes really struggled. The fruit set wasn’t great, which may well have been nothing to do with the hail, and the grapes were quite diseased, probably due to split skins allowing bacteria to get into the grapes. Here are a few pictures taken in September, around the time I attempted a harvest. A few bunches were good, but all in all it was not a good year!

I managed to pick out the best grapes from the Phoenix and Orion vines but it still only came to 1.7kg.  I decided I would process the grapes anyway, and the family had a little tasting on Christmas day, but it was not great wine. It was drinkable, but not great. I hope this is due to me trying to produce such a low volume that makes it virtually impossible for it not to oxidize/spoil. It looked good, and had cleared well but had a very slight off smell. Something I have experienced before which I think is due to small amounts of hydrogen sulphide produced during the fermentation. Maybe 2016 will be the year? I try to remain hopeful!

In the meantime, with the disappointments of 2015 I decided to concentrate on  ‘The Winery’.  It is certainly coming on, and now has sink with hot (warm) and cold running water. It just needs a few finishing touches and will soon be ready for some serious action.

Time to update on the activities in the vineyard in 2016.  After the disappointing year last year I was hoping that this year was going to be the one that proved that this little project was worthwhile.  It didn’t get off to a great start.

The Solaris vines got hit by a late frost:

And the Phoenix vines had a lot of non-fruiting shoots.

Slightly despondent, I took my eye off the vines almost completely while I carried on with the beer side of things – at least that is going well, with a few successful brews under my belt.

In September I visited Frithsden Vineyard which makes wines from both Solaris and Phoenix grapes. It was great to try out their wines which were delicious, and to get some idea of what my wines could possibly taste like – if only I could get a decent harvest.  It was also very interesting to see that they use a high wire trellising method, and on some of their vines use a Geneva Double Curtain, which basically means that the vines hang downwards on double rows, with vines planted only 3 feet apart instead of the usual 6 feet.

I suddenly had new enthusiasm to adopt this in my vineyard, which would mean twice the yield (hopefully) and in theory should help with frost protection by keeping the main shoots much higher off the ground.  I can’t start changing anything until the winter and it would take a few years to get everything re-trained, but this is at least something new to try!

The harvest of the Solaris grapes happened on 15th September, and due to the frost back in April was pretty small.

Only 2.2 kg of grapes, which produced about a litre of wine. On a positive note, the stats for the grape juice were good, with a SG of 1.084 (potential ABV of 11.4%) and a TA of 0.96%. This meant I had to make no adjustments. I pitched using Champagne yeast and fermented at a nice cool 16°C.

Fermentation took about 2-3 weeks, and after a month was crystal clear. Rather than racking I decided to bottle it.  I filled 1 bottle and drank the rest, which I thought was pretty good. I have yet to get my panel of tasters to try it out.

Meanwhile, I harvested the Orion and Phoenix grapes together on 10th October.  This was slightly earlier than planned for the Orion but the birds had started on them and they were disappearing fast. Due to such a low yield of Phoenix I blended them together to produce 3 litres of juice (SG 1.070 and TA 0.83%) which required a little sugar to bring the gravity up.  I pitched this with Champagne yeast as well, and is currently bubbling away happily at 16°C.

This winter I plan to cut down the varieties to one or two (based on the outcome of the tastings), take lots of cutting for propagation and start the re-training to a high wire double curtain system.

Looking at the last update in April 2017 you would be forgiven for thinking that things were a bit of a lost cause in the vineyard. On the contrary, the vines made an impressive recovery last year and I managed to get about 7kg of grapes. Not exactly a bumper harvest but a harvest nonetheless, and I pressed and fermented the juice to end up with 2.5l of wine from a combination of the Phoenix and Orion grapes. There weren’t many Solaris grapes when they were ripe so I just pressed them for juice, which was delicious!

I thought it would be fun to try and turn the 2.5l of wine into sparkling wine, so that is what I have just done. I took the wine which was well settled and clear by now, and added a 4% ‘mother culture’ or ‘Liquer de Tirage’ as they call it in that French region famed for its sparkling wine. It is a mixture of wine, yeast and sugar, prepared a couple of days in advance of bottling to ensure the yeast is fully activated.  The yeast is a particular variety that is used for Champagne, which is quite happy fermenting at low (cellar) temperatures to provide the secondary fermentation in the bottle which produces the fizz.

So I have bottled the concoction into 3 champagne bottles, yes 3 whole bottles, capped them, and laid them down in the fridge set to 12°C.  I’ll leave them for a few months now before the next stage of removing the caps along with the yeast sediment before final corking. According to the official rules of Champagne production, they should sit for at least 18 months to fully mature, but no doubt I’ll be too impatient and want to try some before then.

In the vineyard things are also looking good. We had no late frost this year and the vines are growing like mad in their new ‘Geneva Double Curtain’ format. The bunches are forming well and there are LOADS of them! No doubt there will be some disaster as there always is but at the moment I’m remaining positive for a bumper harvest. The next critical time is late June when they flower, so let’s hope for some good dry days then.