Tuesday 3 September 2013

From barrel to bottle

One night, after a few glasses of the good stuff, a new project was born. In 2012 we harvested our own vineyard for the first time and made our own wine...that in itself is a bit of an achievement for two novices. So, why stop there we thought?

So enthused (carried away?) were we with the whole wine making thing -or was it the wine?! - before we had even harvested our first grapes we had the genius idea that, instead of bottling our wine in the standard green litre bottles with beer bottle type metal caps as do most folk round here, we would go all out and bottle and label our wine to make it look like the real deal. During a conversation with our lovely guests, the Sharmans, last summer, whilst sitting on the terrace, under the stars, Adrian mentioned that he might be interested in using his  graphic design expertise...which started the cogs working!

After some careful thought and a suggestion from Adrian, we decided that we wanted a label that would tell a story, a label that would develop with us, as our knowledge of the wine making process grows. Adrian translated our ideas and our wording into our first year's label.


From then on there was no going back. We ordered the labels, bought the bottles and corks from our fabulous local vineyard Pietrantonj at Vittorito, run by two superbly dynamic sisters, who are the eighth generation of winemakers in their family, we bought a corking machine and a bottle drying rack, and set to with our Ikea funnels and Robert Dyas plastic jug - nothing but the latest techniques and most advanced technology is used in our bottling plant!

So now, all that is left is to sit back and enjoy our 2012 vintage, whilst pondering our label for the next harvest. Watch this space...!!









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