Just when we started to think that things were going well – a minor disaster occurred to bring us back down to earth. This morning when we opened for business we quickly discovered that all was not well in the cellar…. our refrigeration system had broken down during the night! The problem is that although we use one part of this cooling system for the cold stabilisation of our wines throughout the year, the rest of the system, that we use for chilling the tanks, is really only used once a year (for three or four weeks during the harvest and wine making period). Ask any winemaker and they will tell you that probably the single most important piece of kit during the wine making process is temperature control. Without it, wine making would be a total lottery, and making a good, fresh, crisp white wine, almost impossible.

Of course we should not forget that our equipment is more than 20 years old, and as mentioned before, is only used extensively once a year – it should hardly come as a surprise therefore, that it is going to break down now and again.

The difficultly is that during the harvest, once the grapes are pressed we have to cool the juice very quickly. If we don’t have a cooling system, we really can’t press grapes, and so the whole cycle of picking and pressing  comes to a grinding halt.

It was not until lunch time that the engineers gave us their verdict. Some burnt out circuits had to be replaced, and these come from Madrid! Thanks to express overnight courier services we would have the parts quickly, and in the meantime, they were able to make a temporary repair. The downside was that we lost at least half a days grape collecting in almost perfect weather conditions with cloud fast closing in from the south-west.

Just when we started to think that things were going well – a minor disaster occurred to bring us back down to earth. This morning when we opened for business we quickly discovered that all was not well in the cellar…. our refrigeration system had broken down during the night! The problem is that although we use one part of this cooling system for the cold stabilisation of our wines throughout the year, the rest of the system, that we use for chilling the tanks, is really only used once a year (for three or four weeks during the harvest and wine making period). Ask any winemaker and they will tell you that probably the single most important piece of kit during the wine making process is temperature control. Without it, wine making would be a total lottery, and making a good, fresh, crisp white wine, almost impossible.

Of course we should not forget that our equipment is more than 20 years old, and as mentioned before, is only used extensively once a year – it should hardly come as a surprise therefore, that it is going to break down now and again.

The difficultly is that during the harvest, once the grapes are pressed we have to cool the juice very quickly. If we don’t have a cooling system, we really can’t press grapes, and so the whole cycle of picking and pressing  comes to a grinding halt.

It was not until lunch time that the engineers gave us their verdict. Some burnt out circuits had to be replaced, and these come from Madrid! Thanks to express overnight courier services we would have the parts quickly, and in the meantime, they were able to make a temporary repair. The downside was that we lost at least half a days grape collecting in almost perfect weather conditions with cloud fast closing in from the south-west.