Liquid sunshine - a pre-harvest slurp.

We took the first of our prélèvements today. That's a random sampling of the grapes we're intending to pick for this, our last year's, harvest. Once we had a couple of hundred grapes we took them home, squashed them and tested them for sugar content and acidity. All looks good, although the grapes aren't quite mature enough yet. The pips could do with being slightly more brown and crunchy, then we'll know we're ready to roll.

Having agreed to sell the vineyard, it wasn't our intention to make another vintage, but our grapes are looking amazingly healthy despite our having failed to spray them even once this summer. Normally everyone sprays against a variety of ills such as oïdium and various moulds. We would usually spray with organic treatments every ten days during the summer but our time and will ran out. As luck would have it our vines have remained perfectly healthy so we got away with it.

The vineyard sale will not be finalised for another month or so, so the vines and grapes are still ours. The juice is delicious and we still have all our equipment, so why not make one more batch? I think we could quite easily manage to make another 500 bottles without it being too arduous. Just one full trailer of grapes should do it.

I'm guessing we'll be picking next Tuesday if the ripening continues well over the next few days. Fancy a final pick?