Since harvest last October there hasn’t been a great deal of activity on the vineyard until the last couple of weeks when work has been gradually picking up as Spring progresses. The main tasks have been pruning and setting the vines for this grape growing season and generally tidying up the grass aisles and under vine row cultivation.
That’s not to say other things haven’t been happening.
The grapes harvested last October were shipped directly the same day to Defined Wines, specialists in contract wine production for small/medium scale growers like ourselves. Same day delivery was achieved thanks to Palmer and Martin of Bishops Stortford who were extremely helpful and flexible with the transport arrangements needed to cope with shifting the many Dolav containers of grapes door to door.
As soon as the grapes were offloaded, they went straight to pressing and off to stainless steel and oak barrel fermentation vessels whereon Defined have been carefully crafting the process to develop a selection of marvellous still wines that will be going to bottling and labelling from April to June this year.
This week we have had chance to test the initial blends of the resultant wines. This has been an exciting first for us and was conducted at the winery under the auspices of two of the head winemakers and four “tasters”.
Fair to say the trepidation that we had was immediately dispersed on the first tasting of the Bacchus white and only got better as we progressed through the blended white, rose and red.
With our first time nerves dispersed we are now very excitedly looking forward to receiving the first bottled Gunyah Vineyard wines which we can’t wait to see enjoyed by others. Hope we’ve made enough!