We picked our first grapes of the 2014 harvest on Thursday - around 2.5 tonnes of Seyval which have been pressed to produce some 1500 litres of juice which in the wine world is called
must. This will be fermented to produce a wine, probably blended with some Chardonnay, and then fermented again in the bottle for two years or more, to produce a quality English sparkling Blanc de Blancs (made from...
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So far this year we have been blessed with pretty good weather; certainly a lot better than the last few years. As a result, our grapes are ripening sooner than last year and we are now planning our harvest.
It looks like we will start picking week commencing 6th October and finish on
Saturday 18th October, when we will get together with wine club members, family and friend to complete the harvest....
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We now have our very own barn on the vineyard where we can store the tractor, it's various attachments and other equipment. It will also be a a base for vineyard tours and we hope to be able to open up a small retail area once we have a licence.
Of course we had to have a little celebration so we invited Wine Club members, family and friends to join on the vineyard to sample our Silent Pool Rosé...
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| Attila |
Last year we had a problem ripening our Seyval, the majority of which we decided wasn't good enough to make quality sparkling wine. So what to do? Luckily a new distillery has moved in next door to us and we have decided to make a grappa style spirit from what amounts to around 900 litres of Seyval wine.
Attila's Bite, as we intend to call this fragrant aromatic spirit, is named after Alex's...
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Earlier this week we tasted what will be the very first release of our quality bubbly. It's a blend of wines made from our 2011 and 2012 harvests, which were partly aged in oak before being bottled for secondary fermentation early last year. We were delighted with the results; a real credit to our vineyard manager Alex, who carefully nurtures the vines, and also winemaker Matthieu at Litmus.
During...
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| Flowering Chardonnay |
Flowering and fruit set is now well underway on the vineyard and, whilst I don't want to temp fate, the potential for this year is looking very good.
The warm start to the year resulted in bud break about 4 weeks ahead of last year and the good weather since then means that flowering and fruit set are also well ahead. This is good news because it means that we stand a better...
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Great fun at the vineyard on Saturday as we released our Silent Pool Rosé 2013 to our Wine Club members.
Nearly 100 wine lovers turned up to the event, when we tasted not only the new release of our still rosé but also some Albury Pinot Gris and a Pétillante Naturel from the Loire Valley. An alcoholic haze enveloped the vineyard!
Miraculously the sun shone for the whole of Alex's popular tour of the...
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| Winemaker Matthieu with the first bottle of our biodynamic bubbly |
It's been a crazy week, which started with the bottling of 16,000 bottles of Albury Estate sparkling wine from grapes we picked from last years harvest. The wine will go through secondary fermentation during the next month or so to give it it's fizz, and then mature in the bottle for probably for at least two years to give it the...
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Silent Pool Rosé 2013 will be released for sale on Saturday 24th May, the start of English Wine Week.
The wine was made from some of the ripest hand-picked Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes from last years harvest. Having recently tasted some barrel samples we are delighted with the wine and believe it is our best vintage yet.
Stephen Skelton MW comments:
"The wine is a pale salmon pink, with...
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