3461 days ago
One of the attractions of the house the Mrs bought in a Bristol suburb last Christmas is its almost Mediterranean – if small – garden. It sits wedged between the house and my office, aka a large abandoned garage which is now starting to get a bit nippy. On that matter, I remind my rentier landlord (aka the Mrs) that she has yet to provide her exploited tenant (me) with the heating she promised. Truly, the deluded lefty has become a wicked capitalist exploiter. I digress.
The garden came with a lovely rhubarb plant, a fig tree but its main produce is grapes from the vines that snakes around the edge and onto anything it can find to climb along. And so the grapes were, some weeks, ago harvested by myself the Mrs and some of her deluded lefty mates.
How many deluded lefties does it take to harvest a vine? Five (plus myself who was let off grape picking as I was chief cook for the evening.). Of the five, that would be one to play the guitar, two to complain about Thatcher and austerity and the other two to pick the grapes.
The grapes were crushed (not with bare feet it is too bloody cold for that) and left to ferment ad then strained and now sit in two demi-johns. You will note that they are marginally different colours. I cannot remember which is which but one is the top liquid, the second was liquid plus a lot of strained grape material. It matters little. The initial tasting was “interesting”. Bottling takes place shortly and Chateau Brislington should – in theory – be drinkable by next spring. In practise…I have my doubts.
3578 days ago
One of the attractions of the house that the Mrs bought in Bristol last December was a vine that is now threatening to take over the back garden. We have hacked it back a bit but it is unstoppable and bunches of what are very clearly grapes are now clearly visible everywhere.
I have no idea how to nurture this plant but it seems to do very well by itself. I also have no idea of how to turn grapes into wine but it cannot be that hard surely?
Rooting around in the garage, aka my office, the other day I stumbled across a bottle of rose wine left by the former owners from the 2013 vintage. It was marked clearly “drink in the summer of 2014.” The Mrs and I are dutiful folks so obeyed the instructions and much to our surprise it was quite drinkable. A bit on the strong side but who are we to complain.
The 2014 harvest takes place on my return to the UK in the first week of October. Apparently our vine can produce up to 16 bottles a year of Chateau Brislington. That then is the Christmas presents sorted…
