Reducing Costs with Child Labour
October 10th 2008, by GQ
Now that we’re entering a recession, we’ve hit on the idea of bringing in local children to carry out the menial tasks of picking the grapes. The schoolteachers in our local town have been only too happy to get their charges out into the fresh air, and best of all the kids are just the right height to be cutting off the bunches. And they’re free.
Red: The Good, The Bad and The Deadly
October 9th 2008, by GQ
We’re still hanging in there, or rather the red grapes are. The forecast, although constantly changing, is in our favour. After some rain yesterday, more rain now and we’d have to harvest like crazy. Worse still, some of the grapes aren’t quite there yet and the days – and hours of sunlight – are getting shorter.
White Fermenting in Tank and Barrel
October 8th 2008, by GQ
While we prepare for harvesting the majority of the red, we’re busy in the chai with vinifying the white wine. Now that all the grapes have been pressed and the juice has settled, we’ve kicked off the fermentation. The old semillon from Les Trois Hectares has gone into French oak barrels, whereas most of the sauvignon blanc is fermenting in a chilled stainless steel tank. We’ve also got some sauvignon blanc in barrels too.
Caterers in for the Weekend
October 7th 2008, by GQ
We took a break from the harvest by entertaining a team from Charlton House, the caterers, who were staying with us for the weekend in the chateau and in the farmhouse. Dinner at the chateau on friday night was followed by a tour of Bordeaux vineyards on saturday, with a full-on evening out at La Tupina, Bordeaux’s best known restaurant. The wine list there is on the pricey side, and we wanted to drink wine from vineyards we’d visited, so we asked them politely if we could bring a bottle or two. They agreed and the bottle or two expanded to four magnums, but they didn’t seem to mind.