Picked for the very first time

                                                     Little Buddha...


And I really, really enjoyed it. Even though I managed to be the first "casualty" i.e cutting my finger with the snips. Surely there must be some kind of prize for that?

We were tasked to pick a parcel of Rondo which is a hybrid. Mother: Saperavi Severnyi (which has got a V.Amurensis parent) Father: St. Laurent
It's a fairly full bodied red grape with descent structure. While tasting it I found the skin a bit tough and spicy. Veraison and harvest occurs early with this variety so a type certainly suitable for the English climate.
The most interesting part was to see the state of the vineyard. There were not much grapes to pick due to the fact that birds and wasps had been there already. Apparently they work as a stealth team causing immense damage. The birds pick at grapes and causes the skin to brake, then for the wasps to fly in after and literally suck them dry. A whole new way of shrivelling grapes. Fascinating! See Below.

                                                           

As you can understand it's highly damaging for the crop, but purely as a learning exercise it was amazing. This is how you learn. Anyone can snip of healthy clusters one after the other. But having to literally groom each one, according to how many grapes were healthy, sometimes only snipping a single grape from a cluster and throw the rest away - that's another feat altogether. Very cool indeed.
Unfortunately one guy got stung TWICE, while I'm glad I only got to let out a very girly shreak when realising the grape I thought I held was actually a pretty angry wasp.

Since this batch was particularly small we also picked some random red grapes to go in the blend. To the right you'll find Dornfelder: A grape of German origin. A cross between Helfensteiner and Heroldrebe. Trollinger is a grandparent which might be more recognisable.
In the words of Jamie Goode he was first introduced to this wine being presented as something non red wine drinkers would like. What does that tell you? Yes, it is very bland. Virtually no tannin, not much acid but good colour.

Another very interesting thing to experience was picking Cascade: A french-American hybrid and a little troublesome one at that. It's quite pale and low in acidity. Very susceptible to viruses and buds quite late. I am thinking that perhaps the latter is the reason for why it's clusters took a bit of a beating this year.
Apparently it was a particularly early starting season. But then it got really cold again. Uneven flowering and some fruit not set lead to what you can see below. A very difficult cluster to tidy up. Hopefully the crusher/destemmer managed to do a better job.


I have added a few more photos but would like to apologies for the poor quality.

                                         Dave Perrin - Vineyard Instructor

                                         2nd year student @ Crusher/Destemmer

                                                     Stems etc.

x Charlotte