No sooner had I posted my words about the hot weather in August, than there was a slight downturn. That’s not to say that it started pouring with rain, but more that the high temperatures dropped by a few degrees. The reality is that we were left with levels more reminiscent of a Galician summer. The average dropped to nearer the mid 20’s C (mid 70’s F) – there has been more cloud (albeit not total cloud cover), and there was even one day of rain, which thankfully, was more or less just that single day. In effect, this actually helps to clean the fruit, and remove any layer of dust that might exist from the dry spell. The other factor that we have noticed are the much cooler nights. In summary, the very hot, dry spell lasted only some 3 or 4 weeks and may not have done quite as much work as we had hoped, in terms of ripening the fruit. Certainly the fruit that has been exposed directly to the sun is ripe, whereas that in the shade is very much on the borderline of being fully ripe.

Samples have been taken, and analysis has been made, that shows us exactly as we had suspected, some fruit would benefit from a bot more sun. The problem with this is, because of the unusual growing season (mostly cool, changeable weather followed by this short burst of summer heat), the acidity levels in some of our fruit is unusually low. As a result we will start picking selected vineyard sites this Thursday 12th September, which is actually very close to the date that I projected some three months ago after flowering.