Inflorescence

The vines are coming on well and looking in good condition. We've spent a very tiring morning spraying all the vines in the amphitheatre with bordeaux mixture, an organic solution used against various mildews. It's a long and rugged walk over uneven ground on a heavy slope up and down to each and every vine.

This year, however, it is an infinitely less onerous task as we have the lovely new (ancient) tractor with a sprayer unit on the back. Most vignerons here just sit on their tractors and the sprayer does all the work, but our land is too steep for that so we have a long tube and a lance and we walk to each vine while moving the tractor along flatter roadways. The huge advantage is that we don't have to carry heavy backpacks any longer. We can only carry 7 litres at a time so it's a long walk back to refill the backpack sprayers. It took us 200 litres to do the amphitheatre so imagine what a heavy trek that saved us.

The vine in the photo is a Syrah at the inflorescence stage - just before flowering.