 |
| A Sunny Albury Organic Vineyard in the Surrey Hills |
The temperature on the vineyard reached 35.8C yesterday at around 2.00pm as we completed the wire lifting on Block B. We were wilting but the vines are very happy with flowering, and now fruit set, throughout the vineyard.
Now that I'm a farmer I find that I'm generally always complaining about the weather, but the current sunny warm spell couldn't...
Read more
 |
| The beginning of flowering (Seyval) |
Flowering has at last started on the vineyard, with most of the Chardonnay and Seyval showing around 25% flowers. The Pinots are a bit behind but with the current warm weather we hope that most of the vineyard will be in full flower the end of the weekend. The vines are several weeks behind their normal growth cycle because of the cold weather earlier in the...
Read more
 |
John Worontschak of Litmus Wines and Marcus Sharp
supervise the bottling of our first bubbly |
Earlier this week I watched our first sparkling wine being bottled.
Since we planted our vines in 2009 and 2010, the weather has been against us and harvests have been extremely difficult. Non the less we have produced some excellent base wine which will hopefully result in a first class English bubbly.
The...
Read more
We now have bud burst right across the vineyard. Bud burst, or bud break, is when you can see the first signs of leaves on the new shoots from the canes that have been tied down after pruning. These will develop into the shoots that will produce bunches of grapes later in the year.
As a result of the cold weather in March and early April, bud burst is probably six weeks behind last year. This is...
Read more
It was bitterly cold on the vineyard last night with the soil reaching -7.6C and air temperatures as low as -3.6C. Fortunately, a result of the cold weather in March and early April, bud burst is late this year so hopefully there won't have been much damage.
Most of the vines are at "first swell", which means that the buds are showing on the canes but they are still brown with no colour. At this...
Read more
It seems that Spring has finally arrived. We know this, not just because it warmer, but because our vines are weeping.
During the winter vines go into a deep state of dormancy and can withstand temperatures of -15C. But as the soil begins to warm up, and temperatures get above 10C, the vines start to wake up. The roots begin to absorb nutrients and water and osmosis pushes the sap up from the root...
Read more
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....
Read more
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...
Read more
 |
| 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...
Read more
