Le Couvent wine blog

Too cold to think

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 19:09:25 +0100

Crikey, it’s freezing in the vineyard. Here are Cissy’s lemons, all wrapped up against the bitterly cold winds which whip straight off the ridge and down across the Grenache and Carignan, before slicing through the Syrah.

We haven’t started pruning yet. As we only have 5000 vines we are able to leave it until after Christmas. Tomorrow we’re going up to the vineyard to tidy up the caravan so we have somewhere clean and sheltered for lunch. When you prune in the wind it’s just exhausting, so hot soup in Olive the caravan should be just the ticket to keep up the spirits when we start pruning at the end of this week.

Meanwhile, although the cabbages are coming on a treat, there’s not too much to harvest at the moment. So we make the most of our daily dog-walks by collecting these enormous pine cones which make fantastic firelighters.

Shelley's shed - Shedley

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:00:54 +0200

When we bought the vineyard we were lucky enough to have a small mazet already there. The previous owner built it around 50 years ago using nothing but the stone from the land and a great deal of hard work. He would spend entire summers in the vineyard, with his family, camping there for weeks on end. Water came from the well, vegetables from the potager, rabbit, hare and birds from the land and fruit from the orchards.

In the intervening years the mazet has become increasingly dishevelled and the roof on one wing simply wasn't there. So over the past few days Ali and I, along with our good pals John, Chris & Sue, have been restoring a roof to that side. As far as possible we've tried to use recycled materials. The joists came from Le Couvent, where they used to form part of the old floor in our apartment. We built up the walls with stones we gathered from around the vineyard. We filled in odd gaps with mortar mixed with an old straw bale left over from an archery session. As a nod to Ali's family in Western Australia we used that very antipodean material, corrugated iron, for the roof. Preformed cement-based roofing sheets would have been too heavy. Old terracotta roof tiles act as weights as much as decoration, but don't cover the whole roof. The gates have been donated by my brother, Justin, who's just replaced his house-gates.

Puttng a roof on the mazet has a two-fold function. Firstly, it finishes off the building as it was originally conceived. However, the second and main reason is that we need somewhere to keep our soon-to-arrive tractor securely.

We have got as far as putting the roof on and filling in the open window with a glass wine bottle insert. With a bit of luck the gates will go on towards next weekend. We're thrilled with it and hope that Shelley the tractor will be safe and dry there.

A thousand thanks to Chris and Sue for flying here from Brighton specifically to help us, and to John for is amazing roof-work despite having a stitched thumb.

All systems go

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:55:56 +0200

Once again we’re ahead of everyone else in the sugar/acid/maturity of the grape thing. So we start picking our Syrah on Saturday 4th September. The poor grapes were pretty small to start with and they’re starting to shrivel so we’re going to pick them before they disappear completely. Lack of rain has been a real problem and the Syrah have suffered the most.

The Carignan are pretty much ready too. Delicious fruit with a crunchy, nutty pip. We’re hoping to make a single variety Carignan this year. The Grenache are doing fine but aren’t quite there yet and neither are the stars of this year’s show, the Cinsault which a looking luscious and gorgeous as you can see in the photo above.

If you’re up for lending a hand come along to Le Couvent, Roujan at 6.30am on Saturday armed with some secateurs (and a pair of rubber gloves if you’re scared of the odd wasp sting). We’ll supply breakfast and a picnic lunch and an awful lot of laughs as ever.

Wish us luck!

This time last year

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:15:47 +0200

Today, last year, we picked half our red grapes. They were probably already past their optimum but we simply hadn’t started testing the grapes for maturity. It was only when our pal and mentor, Hans, suggested we check our grapes that we realised the season had been so hot and dry that the grapes could be ready ridiculously early. So we tested, then we picked immediately as the sugar levels were already very high and the grapes were shrivelling.

So this year, after a cooler summer, we’re much, much later and not likely to be picking the reds for another two to three weeks. However, we are going to pick our whites tomorrow. They are yummy - sweet, but with enough acidity to make the juice refreshing. We don’t want to make wine with them because we have such a minuscule quantity and we don’t have the right conditions to make a white wine. What we will do, though, is tread the grapes and put delicious Muscat Petit Grain grape juice on the breakfast table for the next few days. Lucky guests eh?

Things are looking up

Wed, 4 Aug 2010 08:28:42 +0200

What a difference a bit of rain can make. Yesterday I took the dogs up to the vineyard for a stroll and I do believe the grapes suddenly looked a bit fatter. From thinking that they were shrinking and would all be ripe or have fallen off by the end of the week, I now think we may be on target for a normal, early September, harvest.

If so, that would be a first. In 2008 we were dictated to by the storm. In 2009 drought meant we picked in mid-August. Wouldn’t it be great to see the grapes go full-term?

Meanwhile, we are in the process of getting our tiny cave ready for the vendange. Lovely John has been to fill in a big gap above the door which prevented us from being able to cool the space. Now we can have the air-conditioner keeping the temperatures down a bit so that we can slow the fermentation and extract more delicious fruit.

Decisions, decisions

Sun, 1 Aug 2010 14:51:32 +0200

I'm being kept awake at night worrying about the state of our vines. They started out pretty well this year, but, frankly, I think they look rather feeble on the whole. The grapes are tiny and the vines still don't have really vigorous leaf growth. So I'm re-thinking our strategy.

For those who haven't been following our blog over the past three years, let me take you back a bit. When Ali & I bought our tiny 3 hectare vineyard at the end of 2007 we bought a view. The fact that there were 6000 vines didn't really occur to us as they were face-high in thistles and the whole place looked grey. We just wanted a bigger garden!

The vines had been abandoned for four years as the previous owner just grew too old to care for them. Prior to that they'd produced excellent gr apes and wonderful wines had been made from them. We were thinking we'd take up the vines when several friends said "Why don't you look after them for a year and have a go at making some wine? Just to see what's there."
It seemed a reasonable proposition so we took pruning lessons, irritated our wine-making pals witless with stupid questions and spend hours, days and weeks reading viticulture books and scouring the internet for handy clues as to how to grow vines and make wine.

All was going very well and the vines looked terrific when, on September 4th 2008, almost our entire first harvest was dashed away by a freak tornado and hailstorm that took just 7 minutes to wreak havoc in many hectares of nearby AOC vineyards too.

Since then the vines have not really recovered. Added to that we have been trying to use only organic treatments. But I fear that the vines were just too enfeebled to cope with that change. Furthermore, we haven't been able to work the land as we'd have wanted to, for lack of a suitable tractor.

But all that is set to change. Now we have Shelley the Chenillard we will be able to work the land this autumn. The vineyard is on a steep slope and when the rains come the water just rushes off down the hill, never stopping to penetrate the rock-hard, compacted soil. But, with help from Shelley, we might be able to direct some of that water down to the vine-roots this winter. Coupled with that we need to be able to feed the vines, so we're going to spread copious amounts of organic manure. Sort of meat and two veg for vines.

As for the treatments, we're thinking of going against the flow and re-introducing some systemic treatments to get some vigour back into the plants. It seems stupid to chase the organic ideal and lose the vines. Wouldn't it be better to get them strong first, then go down that route a couple of years from now?

Organic vineyards typically yield far less than those using minimal chemical interventions. If I tell you that we've produced just 400 bottles from our vines over each of the past two years you'll understand that drastic measures are called for. In 2008 we would have made nine times as much had the hail not stripped off all the grapes and leaves. In 2009 the drought and heat was such that our grapes were shrinking and already at 15 degrees when we picked on August 18th, some three weeks in advance of a normal harvest. This year there are a lot more bunches, but the grapes are tiny and we are in dire need of some rain if there is to be any juice at all. Soon it will be too late for rain - the grapes will just pop if the skins are too firm. And in any case the water still runs off as Shelley hasn't started her work yet.

We don't want to make loads of wine, but we do have to prune, treat, spray, nurture, walk past every single vine several times a year, so it would be lovely to see them looking well and producing a few more bottles of lovely wine. The wines we have made so far are delicious so we know the potential is there. What we also know is that when you take a decision one year, it's a whole year before you know whether it was a good decision - or not. So a good deal of patience is called for.

We'd be interested to know what your thoughts are about any of this.

Veraison - syrah

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:45:19 +0200

The grapes, though very small this year, are beginning to ripen. This changing colour stage is known as veraison. These are two photos of the same bunch of Syrah from our small parcelle in the bottom of the amphitheatre.

The green grape photo was taken on 24 July and the more colourful one today, 28 July. You can see the progress that’s been made in just four days. This is one of the more advanced bunches and when the majority of the parcelle has reached the same point as the top photo we’ll have a rough idea of the likely harvest date. For some time now I’ve thought we’d be harvesting from about 12 September. Apart from the early ripeners like the Muscat Petit Grain and our Merlot which will probably see the secateurs a little earlier, I reckon we’re pretty much on target for harvest during the second week in September.

So if you’re thinking of coming to help, start sharpening your clippers and stretching your back! And please, please pray for some overnight rain to swell our tiny grapes a tad.

Introducing Graham Le Grenache

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:50:57 +0200

May I introduce you to Graham le Grenache? He’s the one in the middle of the photo, standing shoulder to shoulder with two fellow vines. I shall be following Graham’s progress over the next year, with photo updates each week.

Sure, for much of the time Graham won’t be doing a great deal, but at least you’ll get to see the bright skies of the Languedoc winter.

Graham le Grenache was planted on the uppermost slopes of our vineyard about twenty years ago by the former owner of the land. The vines had been abandoned for four years when we bought them in 2008, so Graham wasn’t in the best shape. Some pretty severe pruning means that we have had tiny quantities of grapes from all our vines, but they and he are looking much stronger now.

“Why buy a vineyard full of weak and abandoned vines?” I hear you ask. Well, the simple answer is that we didn’t, we bought a view then realised we’d have to treat the vines or tear them up. So we’ve become accidental winemakers.

Graham enjoys the best view of any vine in our vineyard. To his left he can see the aeoliennes just outside Montpellier. Straight ahead lies Sete and Agde, and on a clear day there are the snow topped mountains of the Pyrenees to his right.

A tractor at last!

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:08:39 +0200

For the past two years I’ve been looking for a tractor. Not just any tractor, but a tractor on tracks (un chenillard) which will cope with our hilly terrain. Wheels just won’t work - a normal tractor would fall over on the slope.

I’ve spent hours, days and weeks trawling through advertisements on the Internet. They’re all ancient, so the game is to find one that actually looks like it might work. I’ve looked in Champagne, the Loire, Italy and nearby Spain - all to no avail.

Then I happened to mention it to the lovely Simon Coulshaw, my winemaking pal who lives just ten minutes away. “But I’ve got two” he said. “I can sell you one - I don’t need them both” So we went to look at the most recent one, but turned it down on the basis that we needed to spend months in the gym just to turn it.

Today we went to look at Shelley - a 40 odd year-old St Chamond 35cv chenillard, named by Simon’s six-year-old daughter. I guess the name will have to stick - yuk. However, Shelley’s a complete sweetie and Ali and I can’t wait to put her to work in our vineyard this coming October, once the harvest is over.

Until now we have had to watch the rain pouring off the hill, never stopping to penetrate the soil. Now that we can work the land we should be able to improve the health of our vines.

Happiest of all will be our lovely volunteers who broke their backs to hoe the Syrah parcelles. This year they won’t need to if Shelley pulls her weight.

Thanks for starting off the Tractor Fund, Andrew. It was just the kick-start we needed. Who’ll be first to have a go during next year’s volunteers week in March?

Tricky time

Sun, 4 Jul 2010 15:36:02 +0200

Today it’s about 34 degrees centigrade in the vineyard and the weather forecast is for the odd thunderstorm. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain - at least not until the grape bunches have reached ‘fermeture’ in a couple of week’s time - the point where the individual grapes have reached 70% of their eventual size and are tightly bunched against each other - when the risk of disease is diminished. You can see how the Syrah look at the moment in the photo on the right.

The weather in May was absolutely set against easy treatment of the vines. We have to spray, by hand, roughly each ten days, with an organic mixture of copper and sulphur to prevent various ailments to which vines are susceptible - such as oiidium, mildew and excoriose. Unfortunately there were just days and days and days of rain so we were struggling to find time to carry out the spraying.

Now it’s boiling and we have a full house of B&B guests so again we are finding it tough to find a good time to do the last of the sprays before ‘fermeture’ Ideally one does it first thing in the morning before the sun starts to beat on the vines. That’s exactly the time we have to prepare breakfast for our guests. Alternatively we could do it late in the evening - but that’s when we have to do aperitifs and sort out restaurant bookings for all our lovely guests. In the past we’ve hired a lad with a car and strong shoulders to lug about the big motorised mister, but he’s moved north.

So our vines are vulnerable until we can find a solution. Keep your fingers crossed eh?