This vineyard is my dream. Follow the journey from the very beginning.
And I was glad of a rest from straining end braces (and my back) when the poly for the main and sub main lines turned up along with a ripper/pipe layer.
Spent Thursday afternoon laying out the lines, (well it was a beautiful day,) and, after a morning on the braces, Craig turned up with the tractor. I think nothing so far has gone as smoothly
In 2 1/2 hours we had laid around 800m of 2″ and 1″ pipe.
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Think that counts as a successful day.
…in more ways than one. Straining up at 4 deg is definitely hard on the hands. First one done and not looking too bad.
I came across this nicely researched article on Champagne Aubry which I thought worth sharing. They too have planted all seven permitted Champagne varieties although it is shocking to see how little Arbane is in the world. Hopefully, I can help to rectify that. Think I ought to get in touch with them!
Well, they’re in and it feels good, but there were some moments of real concern. Had I chosen the right posts; were they strong enough for ramming; did it matter that they couldn’t be pointed? In the end, all it took was a good operator with good experience and rain; lots of it.
The 8’x5″ end posts are all pre-drilled and provided the biggest challenge. With the delays meaning installation didn’t begin until after Christmas, drying soils and some rocky patches slowed things up. The 100mm augur bit should have been ample but the difficulties of accurately drilling at a 30 degree angle resulted in a change to vertical posts. While possibly not as strong in design, the upside is that the posts are now 900mm in the ground which we considered plenty strong enough when combined with the 40″ ground anchors. On the other hand, trying to bang them in so far resulted in a worrying attrition rate and unacceptably high costs.
In fact, so great were the concerns, that I put a stop to proceedings until I could think of some way, (or someone,) to do it better. I was resigned at this point to having to pre-drill every hole, even for the 3 1/2″ line posts, with frightening cost implications. Eventually, pouring out my woes to a mate in the south eventuated in him making a call to someone who knew someone who was away at the moment but might be able to help when he gets back …etc…etc. It turned out that he could and, after many more delays, he did. Not only that but, after so much rain fell in April that I was worried about getting onto the site at all, by May 17th, all 620 line posts were in with no pre-drilling and with the loss of only one; a pretty incredible outcome. Love your work Ian Brown.
Yes I am embarrassed, and deservedly so, about how long it has been since I last wrote a post here and it is not because nothing has been done on the vineyard, as the ever increasing stack of invoices will attest to. Neither has so much been achieved that there hasn’t been the time to document the progress. Instead, it is that summer has come and gone leaving a history of seemingly endless frustrations and disappointments rather than the triumph I had naively envisioned in spring. While the intention has always been to maintain an online diary of events from woe to go, any attempt to do so over this time would have resulted in little more than a litany of whinges which would have been neither helpful nor interesting for you all to follow. And so for once I followed my Mother’s advice by sticking to the principle of… “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.”
In retrospect, there were good things to come out of it all…lessons learned in attention to detail, where and where not to cut corners, when to say no and especially that other people simply cannot have the same level of commitment to what is, after all, my dream. There were also some excruciatingly funny moments, (also in retrospect,) usually involving cows, after which the phrase “herding cats” holds less meaning for me.
As always in this amazing place and amazing business, there were the people whose calmness, strength, generosity and occasional comic relief got me through a tricky patch, the first of many I am certain. Incredibly it seems that everything is back on track for the moment, albeit with a bewildering list of things still to do, details of which can now flow again via this blog. Thank you for staying with me and stay posted because, as my Mother would add, if you have got something to say, say it LOUD!
…and maybe after a good bottle of bubbles, it almost looks like a vineyard. 9km of wire strung and many hours of mowing meant a reasonably productive weekend. Desperate to spray off the rows but, frustratingly, the wind picked up today. Maybe this evening.
The babies are definitely growing up. If we don’t get these things in the ground soon we’ll be harvesting from pots!
And by the way, these are the Petit Meslier cuttings. They seem to be taking to our climate very well. 27 viable plants out of around 32 original cuttings received. Not bad at all.
Nearly everything is here, very much later than planned, but at least we have been able to start. The earth anchors from Qing Dao are all we could have hoped, although admittedly a few of them provided a few problems. And believe me, we are throwing everything at it. If it moves, carries, lifts, drills or measures, it is press-ganged into service, (and that includes the kids.)
As mentioned elsewhere, since leaving school, (and for some time before then; sorry Dad,) my life has been mostly about wine. Inevitably, amidst all the fun stuff of growing it, making it, drinking it, there has been the need to sell a case or three which has required some marketing effort. Now I am not someone who thinks that “marketing” is a cover-all career description. I market WINE. That doesn’t mean that I can do the same for Ferraris or double glazing and I am sorry, but neither do I believe that a generic marketing degree gives anyone carte blanche to claim greater expertise in my particular field, (or as it might be, vineyard.)
However, I give full respect to those who have put in the hard yards to learn a product and an industry from the ground up and who use that knowledge to further their cause. Australian wine has gone from nowhere to its current prominent position in not much more than 30 years, thanks to the vision of our industry icons and their considerable marketing prowess, rather than them being dab hands with a plunger or a pipette.
So I admit to finding it more than a little ironic that marketers, rather than building quality perception and demand, which is their role, seem to have earned themselves a status in the wine world similar to cork taint or brettanomyces. With the 90’s far behind us, when everything was fun and easy, and the realities of a tough global market place biting pretty hard, more and more people seem to be jumping on the hate wagon, deriding and blaming marketers for all their woes. Even the occasional journalist, whose over-flowing cellars and busy schedules are mostly courtesy of marketing department’s efforts, are adding to the growing volume of abusive rhetoric.
So a word of warning. We are ALL marketers; we ALL have a need to constantly update and promote ourselves and our qualities and right now we need good marketers more than ever. Don’t fling abuse just because others do. Instead, work out how marketing makes a difference, because it does. Which of us wouldn’t rather be driving a Ferrari rather than a Yamaha, even though the Formula 1 results say otherwise? And with Tassie still denying us a real beginning to summer, I for one wouldn’t mind a little double glazing.
As you may have read in “Firing at Both Ends” there have been the occasional moments of concern. Thankfully, we at least seem to have this particular one under control. The picture shows the I10V5 Chardonnay rootlings, (that’s right, they are no longer cuttings,) which are not only the dominant clone in the planting scheme with 40% of the area, but also the final batch of the Tassie cuttings to strike. Interestingly, they have also survived a light frost completely unscathed, which means that our choice to callous them outside in order to “toughen them up” seems to have worked. This will hopefully reduce first year losses in the vineyard.
Domaine Anthony Woollams 