And just like that, we’re on our way to Harvest 2024. Some years you see it coming, and some years it comes along out of nowhere, as though we hadn’t been checking for signs every week. For the most part, this has meant the vineyard team have redirected themselves to the winery to kickstart harvest prep, while Tom finishes the last rounds of spraying across all of our sites. It’ll be my first time documenting harvest here on Through the Grapevine, but my seventh harvest (roughly… I can never exactly remember what year I started helping my dad harvest the grapes, but it’s definitely been a good few years since!). The Tasting Room has been just as wild this week with back-to-back events; it’s certainly feeling a little devil-may-care around here, but what else can you expect at harvest time?
Through the Grapevine: look at all those boxes!! I wonder what’s in them (wine… they have wine in them).
As aforementioned, Little Wold Vineyard has played host to a selection of events this week. Starting with wedding number one (of three) on Monday, the events team have really gone above and beyond each day to bring these events to life. After a brief break on Tuesday, the team got straight back into it with a wake on Wednesday, supplying the food for the event (which is an option if you’re considering us for private hire –you can check out our private hire brochures here for more information), and a cosy corporate event with MKM on Thursday (we shared their glowing review of this on our Facebook page, we love it when you tag us in your photos and reviews of your time with us across all our socials). Today’s special event is a wonderful wedding day, complete with their own road signs for the event. The weekend is also fully booked for us, with the last wedding of the week tomorrow and our usual cellar door on Sunday.
It’s felt a little bit like going round in circles in the winery this week, as Cam and I complete the last of the blending of the 2023 vintage while also preparing the space for our 2024 season. The last wine we’ve blended is our Three Cocked Hat, which took us a couple of days to complete due to the sheer quantity of red wine that needed to be blended. Our little pump did its very best to get the red blended into three tanks, each holding around 12 hectolitres of wine. The next step for our ’24 Three Cocked Hat will be blending, although with talk of picking being as soon as next week, this may have to wait for a quieter week. Such is the joys of being a small team, we’re all doing at least three jobs at once at all times, and sometimes that means we have to prioritise which three jobs need to be completed to make sure things keep running as they should.
Through the Grapevine: dragging everything out for that Harvest Prep CleanPreparing for harvest at LWV is a process I both love and loathe, like I’ve mentioned this is my seventh harvest. After a quick chat with Tom, I’ve discovered that we’ve only really been harvesting for eight years! Before 2016, the vines at LWV were still young and unable to produce the quantity of grapes that required a full-scale harvest operation. In fact, Henry often managed the original two acres of vineyard up on Thirty Acre on his own, with some help from Alice when the time came to pick! Once we took on the site in Doncaster, we finally had enough produce to warrant a small team to pick at both locations, and the rest as they say is history. All these years of experience has made us relatively efficient in preparing the Dolav bins (which we just call Dolavs) and trays, as well as setting up the vineyards in anticipation of picking days. Where we’re still learning is the winery, which is about to celebrate its third harvest – they grow up so fast – and is in deep need of a good clean. This isn’t anything unusual for wineries, after a year of housing grape juice, fermenting, racking them into tanks, blending filtering, the lot, it would be a small miracle for everything to remain spotless. So while our little pump was working hard on getting Three Cocked Hat blended, Cam and I sterilised the empty tanks and general area. It sort of feels like a, ‘two steps forward, one step back’ process at times as we tried to accommodate and limit the amount of mess created by the blending process. Nothing’s ever straightforward in the world of winery hygiene, but between the two of us I’d say we do a pretty good job, and hopefully the winery is in a good position for what’s to come.
Cam on Cam: is this a tank or the inside of a UFO???And now it’s time for Cam on Cam, which is this cool photo from inside one of our tanks. Their stainless-steel material makes them a durable option for housing wine. While our tanks aren’t huge compared to some of the big-name wineries, our largest tanks at the moment can house up to 22 hectolitres. This can make for an interesting cleaning experience as we try to ensure that all the nooks and crannies of the tank have been thoroughly scrubbed and sterilised. But what’s a small challenge on the road to a squeaky-clean winery?
