Vineyard Diary – Page 3 – Coates and Seely

A Vineyard Diary Part 6

Vineyards and Coronavirus

Coates & Seely battle the most deadly of viticultural threats… the vineyard frost

It’s Tuesday, 3am.

The thermometer in the Landrover is showing just 1°C and the sky is bristling with stars.

It is utterly silent.

We head onto the old Whitchurch Road, driving along the valley floor and turn right at the Watership Down pub, heading north along a narrow lane.

When we reach the top of the hill the sky broadens out and to our right the eastern horizon is already beginning to glow.

A pale half-moon hangs, brilliantly frozen, to our left.

As we approach the vineyard the thermometer drops to zero.

We can see Paulo, our vineyard manager, and his wife, Luisa, in the arc-light of the giant fan he has positioned at the bottom of the vine-rows, facing up the slope.

They have the same look of nervous excitement on their faces that we feel in our bellies.

Coates & Seely battle potential vineyard frost.

Along the northern and eastern perimeters of the vineyard dozens of wood fires, built the previous day, stand ready to be lit. Clumps of green hay lie alongside them, to generate smoke.

A brief parley.

It is still only 3.30am and the temperature is falling rapidly. We are in trouble. At this time of year the young vines will survive at -1°C to -2°C unaided.

Between -2°C and -4°C they need external help – from heat, air movement, smoke or water – if they are to avoid destruction.

Below -4°C and all bets are off.

The vines, at this stage, are like young children. They need protecting.

Paulo starts the giant turbine that drives the fan. The shape of the blades is designed to blow cold air away and suck in the warmer air that sits directly above it. Its arc covers one quarter of the most vulnerable area of the vineyard.

It is the latest technology, from New Zealand.

As he calibrates the angles of the fan-head, the rest of us move along the long line of fires with firelighters and tapers, lighting each with military precision. Once the fires are raging, we will layer the green hay across them to muffle the flames and create a layer of smoke.

This is the old-fashioned way to prevent vineyard frost.

Vineyard fires to protect against vineyard frost at Coates & Seely.

A little later, having finally positioned the giant fan, Paulo appears on a tractor pulling what is known as a ‘Frostbuster’.

Imagine a giant hair-dryer on wheels, but a hundred and fifty times bigger, fuelled by huge gas cannisters, that is towed behind the tractor and blows out an endless stream of hot air.

It is the equivalent of a thousand management consultants, all consulting at once: a lot of noise, a lot of heat, and not much effect.

It is yesterday’s technology.

The Coates & Seely 'Frostbuster' defence against vineyard frost.

But in times of crisis, action – almost any action – is consolatory.

When we started out as vignerons it was hard to accept, at first, that we could not control our lives, that we were at the mercy of forces beyond us. So we learned, early on, the therapeutic value of activity, and a hard-won resignation.

By 5 am the temperature has fallen to -2°C and is still falling. By sunrise, in 30 minutes, it will have hit the danger zone.

All our defences against the vineyard frost are now up across various parts of the vineyard. There is nothing more we can do. I walk to the top of the hill.

Across the valley, looking eastwards, the faint pink light that had earlier smudged the black silhouette of the treeline is now a blazing orange. When the sun finally rises it catches the delicate layers of smoke that lie across the valley floor, turning them to shades of angry red and black.

It is hard to imagine a scene at once more beautiful and lethal.

I walk back down through the vines to the others.

As I do my hand is drawn instinctively to some of the frosted vine leaves. I stroke them dry, as I once wiped my children’s fevered foreheads in their sleep. It is only then I realise how much all this means.

We won’t know how much damage there has been until later in the day.

Our work is finally done. We thank one another and part with a comforting sense of solidarity, before making our various ways home. It has been a long and exhausting morning and all the team have worked well. We are fearful but, in the circumstances, could not have done more.

Only time will now tell…

Coates & Seely's Vineyard manager Paulo Veloso and Luisa

(to be continued….)

A Vineyard Diary Part 5

Vineyards and Coronavirus

At Coates & Seely we while away the magical hour between 6pm and 7pm, when the deliveries are done and our worldly cares vanish in the innocent blush of a first drink, with the creation of a number of new cocktails designed specifically for Coronavirus lock-down (collectively, a “quarantini”).

Christian out-classes us all in this particular endeavour, devoting his considerable knowledge and energy in pursuit of perfection.

His current masterpiece is what we have decided to call a ‘Sbagliato Cinese’: 1/3 Campari, 1/10 Carpano Antica Bitters and the rest sparkling wine (best, of course, with Coates & Seely)

You should not wait for the lifting of lock-down to try this quarantini, nor be deceived by the name. It is utterly delicious, and by altering the fractions of the ingredients you can achieve either a sensible or a thrillingly rapid ascent to heaven (a useful contingency in current circumstances).

On the subject of quarantinis, you will have noticed the current pandemic is spawning a new vocabulary.

A “coronacoaster”, describing the emotional gyrations in a pandemic – loving lock-down one minute and weeping with anxiety the next – would, if we were classifying each new word, definitely be awarded a ‘first-growth’.

There are many others, which you will no doubt have seen. What you might not have seen, however, is that there is a saint who shares a name with this pandemic: a young female martyr, slain by the Romans in the second century AD for comforting a tortured enemy soldier, and canonized subsequently as St Corona.

Today, she is revered principally in the small town of St Corona am Weschel, in Austria – which is, perhaps not surprisingly, still under lock-down.

Do visit, though, when lock-down is finally lifted.

Its principal attraction is its state-of-the-art theme park.

“The Corona Park”, we are told, is set amongst verdant hills and its centrepiece – the “Corona Coaster” – can be experienced (by contrast to the Sbagliato Cinese) with either a comfortable or a thrillingly rapid descent (in this case, to hell…)

Still to be pondered at this stage, though, is an apposite word for the socially-distanced drinks party that will soon be following once lock-down is lifted.

We have already received early orders of Coates & Seely in anticipation of this new phenomenon.

Its merits are clear, presenting as it does, with its guaranteed distancing of up to 2 metres from any bore in the room, the perfect alibi for not listening, with near complete protection from even the most determined of spittle, and capped by significantly enhanced escape (and exfiltration) potential.

But we do need a name for it.

Answers please, and a bottle of Coates & Seely (or, for the hard-core among you, a Sbagliato Cinese), to the winner.

(to be continued….)

A Vineyard Diary Part 4

Vineyards and Coronavirus

Rosie describes herself on her twitter page as a “Proud Northern Girl”, but this tells only half the story.

She is also a senior nurse on a COVID 19 ITU ward at University College Hospital London.

Rosie approaches us out of the blue (as angels do) for some sponsorship of the UCHL nurses, having tasted Coates & Seely wines with her family in happier times.

We respond positively and deliver our contribution to her flat in Bethnal Green.

It’s five weeks into lockdown when we do, and she has just finished a 13 hour shift at the end of a 70 hour working week, but she’s still smiling. She’s been unable to see any of her family, whom she’s missing badly, for many weeks now, yet she radiates good humour.

We offer to help her carry the heavy boxes of Coates & Seely we have brought with us up the long flight of stairs to her flat, but despite her exhaustion she insists on doing it herself, conscious of the hazard to us.

Always thinking of others.

With her best friend, Jenny, another senior nurse on the ward, they started a campaign called Kindness a few weeks ago.

It’s a campaign that does what it says.

Initially contrived to source cosmetics for nurses whose faces are raw after 13 hours under face-masks, the campaign has since broadened rapidly.

‘Cowshed’ provided the first face-creams and hand lotions but numerous firms, in response to the nurses’ gentle campaign, have since chipped in.

‘Itsu’ now provide daily sustenance, ‘Ferrero Rocher’ chocolates, ‘Camden Brewery’ beer and ‘Roberts Radios’ a soothing voice from the outside world, to name just a few.

As the goods flood in, Rosie and Jenny spend what little time they have off dispensing them across the huge ITU nursing staff at UCHL.

This is a time-consuming logistical task in itself, but it raises morale and brings some much-needed light into the frequent darkness of their working lives.

Rosie says it’s worth all the extra work just to see the smiles on the nurses’ faces. Many of them, particularly the younger ones, are fearful and lonely.

If anyone wishes to contribute items to their Kindness campaign, Rosie can be contacted on Rosalind.edwards2@nhs.net or tweeted on @rosebud2605.

They will be as grateful as they are giving.

Nearer to home, we deliver the rest of our charitable budget to the equally wonderful ITU nurses at Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, each of them exposed to the same hardships of combatting COVID 19, which they do on all of our behalves.

May God bless them all.

(to be continued….)

A Vineyard Diary Part 2

Vineyards and Coronavirus

It’s 7.30 am.

A cold northerly breeze is whipping across the vineyard. The country is in lockdown, imposed the night before by an uncharacteristically subdued PM.

I am the first to arrive.

Ahead of me 35,000 vines shiver in the wind, like expectant children, waiting to be pruned. There is no sign of the Romanian pruning team.

Ten minutes later, my phone rings.

“I’m sorry, Nick, but they’ve gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

The silence is palpable.

“Where the hell to?”

“To Romania. It’s home.”

It takes a while for the implications to sink in.

The vines need pruning. Without pruning, there will be no fruit.

Already our existing wine sales, made largely to the hospitality and events sectors, have plummeted, and with the nation in lockdown they will rapidly fall to zero. No sales, and now, no wine.

Bugger…

Give us botrytis, mildews, drought, floods, wild boars, even Jean Claude Juncker, but please, not this…

Rapid calls to the Home Team.

By 9am Virginia (Head of Events, Left), Georgie (Office Manager, Right) and Tristram (Head of Sales, Centre) have joined Paulo (Vineyard Manager), Andras (Technical Director) and I on the vineyards. We work all day but by 4pm are in despair. It’s a Dad’s Army moment.

There is no way we can hope to finish on time, and the buds will be bursting in just a week from now.

At 4.30pm Tristram puts out a Facebook request.

By 10pm he has 40 willing pruners from among the young, stranded at home unexpectedly, furloughed by school and university. Of the 40, ten have their own transport and can start at 8.30am the following day. They are selected.

“Hands up anyone with a degree in biology.”

A single hand goes up from among the new recruits, all standing 2 metres apart, all on time at 8.30am sharp, armed with pack-lunches and with broad smiles on their faces.

“Ok. You’re hired. Any engineers?”

Two hands raised.

“Mathematicians?”

Another two.

Perfect. They can be the pruners, the vanguard, to be inducted within twenty minutes into the arcane science of spur-pruning.

“The rest of you Liberal Arty-Farters can follow me (English Literature) and Tristram (Theology). We will follow behind, pull out the pruned wood and tie down the canes. ”

Like vineyard, like life.

Each worker is given four rows, of equal length. Ten metres apart. Too far to talk and relative progress visible to all.

“Ready, Steady, Go!”

The competitive juices, like rising sap, flow furiously and work-rates are phenomenal. Social distancing is a gang-master’s nirvana.

Eight days later and we’ve finished. The team is still smiling broadly. The sun is shining and the wind has turned almost southerly. We are in shirt sleeves. The vines are pruned and tied down, like obedient children, ready to burst into life.

Whoever had the effrontery to call the young ‘Snow-flakes’?

They worked hard and they worked fast, always on time, with never a moan, despite the aching backs and bruised hands (pruning is a hard discipline), and always with smiles. They showed true grit.

They were a revelation and, in the circumstances, a mercy, too.

THANK YOU OUR INSPIRING YOUNG TEAM!

PLEASE COME AGAIN NEXT YEAR!

A Vineyard Diary Part 1

Vineyards and Coronavirus

Vineyards are deceptively dangerous things.

Like sirens calling sailors to the rocks, they sing a song of natural beauty whilst the perils – and there are many – remain concealed.

Our own first siren-call, etched clearly in our minds, was in September 1998.

We were staying as a guest of Christian’s at Quinta do Noval vineyard, in the Douro Valley, for the ‘Vindima’, or harvest.

With young children and hectic work and family schedules we were, at that point in our lives, as much inclined to seek to own a vineyard as to volunteer to space-walk without oxygen, yet we were unknowingly about to experience our first call to the rocks.

It would happen each evening, at the end of a sweltering day, after the last of the wicker baskets, groaning with fruit, had been heaved up through the ancient stone terraces.

We would sit under the Cedar of Lebanon in front of the Quinta, as the shadows lengthened, and sip chilled white port and tonic whilst the distant song of the ‘vindimadores’, treading the grapes in the ‘lagares’ further down the hill, would float back in the cool night air, like a siren-call.

There was something almost impossibly romantic about the sound and the place.

Quinta do Noval vineyard, Portugal — Quinta do Noval

It was another ten years before we finally succumbed to the call altogether and decided to plant an English Sparkling Wine vineyard ourselves around our home in Hampshire, in partnership with Christian. And it is now, over 20 years later, that we are embarked on our own, twelfth harvest.

Over the years we have experienced many of the dangers lurking beneath the viticultural romance: the late spring-frosts that in late April and early May can ravage the infant vine-buds just as they are bursting into life; the rain and the cold that can destroy the essential flowering in June; the mildews and botrytis that insinuate themselves like silent assassins as the grapes develop; the marauding song-birds, with their perfect palate for ripe fruit; to say nothing of the wasps and the fruit flies and a whole assortment of other devastating insect-life on the vineyard.

We have experienced, too, the misery of an entirely failed harvest.

2012 was the English wine industry’s ‘annus horribilis’ (it was also the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee: you might remember that chilly, rain-sodden summer as the Thames flotilla lurched through horizontal rain and a soaked Duke of Edinburgh never once batted an eyelid?) One of the more astute English sparkling winemakers proudly announced, Yquem-like, (although no doubt through gritted teeth), that they would make no wine that year. Nor did we, as it happens. The fruit just wasn’t good enough, but we were too grief-stricken to turn it into a PR coup.

“How”, I remember asking Christian at the time – no doubt sounding like some old testament Israelite – “could this happen? Just how much more can be thrown at us?”

“Lots” he replied, a master of sanguine.

He has been doing this for far longer, and is rather more grown up about it.

“We have never had giant hailstones in England, that can destroy a harvest, and sometimes an entire vineyard, as frequently happens on the Continent. Nor do we suffer from excess heat, that can shrivel the fruit to raisins. Nor,” he added, warming to his theme, “do we suffer from grape-eating racoons, as they do in Germany, or wild boar in Italy, baboons in South Africa, or glassy winged sharpshooter flies in California.”

Of course he is right.

The vineyard is always greener on the other side and, as the sirens will attest, they are treacherous things wherever you are.

But then, as we now all know, came Coronavirus…

(To be continued)