Outside in the vineyards, we started removing the rabbit guards on the young vines to expose them to air. The rabbits seem to have a sixth sense and immediately started munching away at the unprotected vines, so we had to put them straight back on again. We don’t really know what to do for the best, as the guards provide a nice warm and moist home for slugs and snails which enjoy feasting on young shoots and leaves, but rabbits are probably the worst villains as leaves will regrow, whereas damage to the young vines themselves can really knock them back.
Also, we don’t want the rabbits getting too much of a taste for them, as we have heard of vineyards upcountry where rabbits have started chewing through mature vines and causing untold damage. They are a real plague on our farm at the moment, digging burrows in the vineyard and exposing roots, digging up old established stone hedges causing them to collapse, and of course they breed like – well, rabbits - so we just can’t seem to get on top of the problem. We’re not alone – I recently read that rabbits are digging up Hadrian’s Wall!
In the winery Sam and Bob have busied themselves with the elevage of the wines. There isn’t really an English equivalent of this French word, but basically it means ‘raising’ or ‘bringing up’ the wines ready for bottling, as you would ‘bring up’ your children. Wines must be clarified, leaving behind dead yeast cells and any skins and stems which remain in the juice. They will be racked from their tanks to clean ones, leaving all this behind, possibly several times, then they will be blended before the wine is clean enough to be coarse and fine filtered, then bottled. We are seriously short of wine, so our aim is to get some 2006 still white wine analysed and tasted ready for sale by Easter.
This is the first vintage that Bob and Sam have worked on as equal partners, and the labels on our new wines will reflect this – ‘father and son.’ With so many young people feeling they have to leave Cornwall for work, we feel fortunate that Sam has not only chosen to return to Cornwall after university, but has also become part of our family business, bringing fresh ideas and the capacity to do an extraordinary amount of hard work. The Times recently ran an article about him in their graduate section, along with an interview about how he has been able to use his maths degree in winemaking and what made him return to the family business. He has received quite a bit of positive feedback from young people finding it difficult to decide what career path to follow. He deserves all the recognition he receives, and I hope Bob and Sam’s wine will as well – it certainly tastes good!