It has been feeling decidedly more wintery in Barham over the past few weeks and finally most of the leaves have dropped or been blown off the vines. As the temperature drops, we begin to think about pruning in the 2014 ‘Roman Road’ vineyard.
The Pinot Meunier (which we did not harvest this year), lost its leaves some weeks ago and has become dormant so this will be pruned first. We will be waiting until January 2017 before thinking about pruning the 2016 plantation. These young vines will be pruned right back to the scion this year to encourage vigorous growth during its second growing season.
In the winery all the wines are progressing well through malo-lactic fermentation and we enjoyed tasting through the juices last week. The stainless steel fermentation tanks continue to be maintained at between 18-19 degrees C, which is the optimum temperature for fermentation to take place.
We have also been giving some thought to the styles of wine that we will release from this vintage, which as you know will focus almost entirely on method traditional sparkling wines. We are now however confident that we will bottle a very small amount of still Chardonnay in 2017! Watch this space for more news about this exciting little experiment in the new year!
