Friday 24 October 2014

Wine time!

Cantina plastered and tiled
The Press after pressing!

It is that time of year again. I can't quite believe it, our third wine harvest since we've been living in Italy...where has that time gone! And this year, we are doing things a little differently.

For the first time we are experimenting with white, as well as red, wine. Already pressed earlier this week and starting to ferment nicely in our stainless steel barrel, we have just under 100 litres of organic white wine sitting, waiting and with any luck it will be as tasty as the red!

And this year the Montepulciano sat for four days in its skins instead of two with the hope of producing a deeper, heavier red. Let's see what happens.

Dougie has spent the summer reading about natural wine and every year we are learning more and more about the wine making process, as well as how to manage the vines during the growing season with the aim of producing good quality organic grapes. Susceptible to lots of diseases if the weather conditions are not spot on though, Montepulciano is not the easiest grape to manage!

Adverse weather early on in the growing season this year has led to reports that for the first time since 1950 France will exceed Italy in volume of wine production this year. No problem here though, luckily a couple of hundred litres should be enough for us!!!!!







The 2012 vintage!