Vintage vittles - Monday 30th March: silica, scones and sampling

A new week dawns and we spent much of today with some visitors from our UK importers. It was as clear and bright an autumn morning as one could wish, and we sent them out first thing with our horse-drawn sprayer to cover our vineyard with Preparation 501. This biodynamic preparation contains silica, enhances photosynthesis, and is ideal to add to the vineyard to support the vines in the final few days before our harvest begins.

Following the crisp morning in the vineyard, a few warm pinwheel scones at the winery door gave us a chance to start the week well and discuss the plans for the beginning of harvest. Controversy briefly reigned when certain members of the team decided to consume their sweet, fruit scones with cheese, but we are a forgiving bunch and the sides agreed to differ peacefully...

After this small carb and caffeine hit, we kept our guests busy and sent them out to put together the samples needed for our pre-harvest analysis. We are watching our fruit like the proverbial hawks at the moment; we pick a bit later than many in the valley, but are waiting for the perfect balance before we make our move.

A morning spent in the vines deserved some vinous refreshment and Clive, our winemaker, provided exactly that with a taste through our range, with our full vintage wine-making team all contributing their points of view and opinions. This year, we have vintage interns from Chile, Austria and France joining our permanent team from UK, New Zealand and Sweden, so there's always some lively debate and conversation! To fuel the discussion, Marcia provided them with some of her world-famous (or at least they should be) corned beef sandwiches. Marcia's sandwich-making philosophy is that if the dressings and ingredients aren't oozing out of the sides of your sandwich then you probably don't have enough in there yet!