Food News Bites from Welsh Country – August 25

Viticulture as in any type of farming is a more than complicated job to get right. This takes skill patience long hours and dedication as White Castle has just demonstrated.

Velfrey Vineyard is based further west in Pembrokeshire telling Welsh Country…

“That Glen the new robot lawn mower is employee of the month. Hard working, devoted to duty, never complains, works long hours – will even work in the dark with his little headlights on. He trundles off down to the bottom of the vineyard, all by himself – he doesn’t seem to get lonely, I rather like to think of him just quietly humming to himself as he goes about his jobs.”

Update on the season so far…

What a difference from last year! Although, we are still saying ‘so far so good’!

Flowering was safely negotiated, fruit set came next and now we are at bunch formation – and I say again ‘so far so good’!

The vines have loved the weather this year and the balance of sunshine and a little bit of rain has been pretty much ideal.

We have been spending time on the canopy management, which started with tucking in the new shoots so that they are held neatly within the trellising wires. With our double guyot system where we lay two canes down (one heading North and the other South) on the fruiting wire, ideally we want the emerging shoots to head straight up through the wires and parallel to their neighbouring shoots.

As well as seeing lots of insects (for example ladybirds, bees, dragonflies etc) and spiders in the vineyard, we also very often find bird nests within the vine canopy, but this year was the first that we found a goldfinch nest in the Pinot Noir – absolutely beautiful! They were very dedicated parents, with one sitting patiently on the eggs and the other playing the local food delivery service, flitting in and out. We know there were at least four eggs and last night, whilst we were enjoying a cuppa in the garden, we were greeted by a ‘charm’ of these delightful birds – and would like to think they were our little Pinot goldfinch family.

After tucking in, it’s straight on to leaf stripping where we remove the leaves from around the mini-grapes to allow the wonderful sunshine in and the air to circulate – all of which helps to keep them healthy, clean and to aid ripening and flavour development.

The Solaris vines are very vigorous and basically love to grow! So keeping them neat is no mean feat! As this is the first variety to ripen, we leaf stripped them first and are now working hard to the keep the canopy under control – think lockdown hairstyle!

The Pinot Noir vines are more bushy than the Seyval Blanc but not quite as wayward as the Solaris; being a variety which can be more prone to disease challenge, it also needs a bit more tlc. So major leaf stripping and spraying with all the health giving tisanes we make here. And so far, things are looking good.

The Seyval Blanc vines are generally more restrained and tidy – although if left the shoots would elongate and spread a long old way!

In all three varieties, the fruit is looking lovely and clean and we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way.

The three year old Solaris vines on the slope in front of the visitor lodge are very happy indeed. The vines have been trained much lower to the ground, which is dark and shaley and absorbs heat which is radiated back up into the ripening grapes. We didn’t realise, however, just how ripe they were getting until we noticed some very keen blackbird attention! So bird netting out and we’ve wrapped these vines up to protect them. Needless to say we have some very grumpy blackbirds regularly tap dancing on top of the netting!

Visit: www.velfreyvineyard.com