I confess that I have been rather distracted by Covid news over the last few weeks, mainly because not too much else has been happening elsewhere. I now realise however, that I have completely neglected the single most important event in our vine growing calendar…. the flowering!

I am happy to tell you that our flowering passed almost perfectly, largely because May turned out to be a dry and quite sunny month. During the last week it was actually very hot, with temperatures well into the 30’s °C (86+ °F). At the end of it all it appears that there might be just a few less bunches than last year, but it’s still early days and a lot can still happen over the coming months.

As there is not really too much to look at in the vineyard, I decided to make a small collage to show the evolution of flowering. The left hand picture (at the end of May), shows the flowering itself. The middle shot (taken a day or two ago), is shortly after the flowering where the berries are just starting to develop and become recognisable. And the right hand picture shows how the bunches will look in a few weeks, when the berries have developed into small peas (before they eventually swell and change colour).