Harvest Day October 2020

What a strange year it has been!

Our whole effort builds up to the day in September or October when we pick the grapes and send off, hopefully, many tonnes to the winemaker. This year has been different for several reasons:

Firstly, the frost in mid May - the latest we have seen since we planted - killed off 95% of the new shoots. We thought at that point that there might be no harvest at all. The Seyval recovered well however, and we became increasingly optimistic about the outcome. For the Pinot Noir grapes the story was different, and they did not recover enough to pick.

Secondly, Covid. It has obviously affected our open days, some of which had to be cancelled, it meant that all the fairs where we normally make the bulk of our sales were cancelled, and it affected our harvest.

We finally picked the Seyval on Monday 19th October. We were unable to invite the number of volunteers who normally make harvest such an enjoyable day. Due to Covid we had to manage with family and a just a couple of well-distanced friends. However, the sun almost shone and those grapes we did manage to pick were good quality. Although a small harvest, we were happy with the result.

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