I simply don’t have the time to update this little news page. I’ll leave the archive up for your amusement, but for more regular ramblings you can find me on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/mattgregorywines/
English Wine Harvest!
Would you like to come and help pick grapes this autumn? If so get in touch.
Vintage 2021
Grapes are picked and wines are made. Mostly resting in bottle for release early this Summer. 2021 was a tricky vintage as normal: cold, wet and grey. Conditions not withstanding the fruit we picked was ultimately very high quality, we just had to wait as late as early November to pick it.
Pre vintage 2021
The lack of posts since the snow days of pruning back in February are simply because I’ve essentially been living in the vineyard.
The cold weather seemed to last for ever early this year and as a result we had very late bud burst. A blessing and a curse as we missed the hard frosts that could have wiped out the young buds, but we were 3 weeks or so late out of the blocks which is difficult time to make up. Glorious weather over Easter pushed the wines on, but we had cool and damp conditions mostly, then it all cheered up for 10 days. 10 days that meant we had more or less perfect flowering and fruit set. It was still late though. Here we are on the last day of August, it’s 15 degrees, over cast and threatening to rain. Veraison is upon us but not widely so we could really do with a sunny September to get what is a tremendous crop of healthy looking grapes to ripeness.
Regent grapes undergoing veraison 
Pinot Gris 
Well tended neat rows of vines
The beginning of the season
Pruning is well under way in the English vineyard. I only have about 6000 plants left to get done. So far it has been really cold standing out on the hill, quite one of the coldest January and February’s of recent years; I have been snowed off twice which is quite impressive.
The 2020 wines are coming together in bottle nicely, the odd check for Quality Control purposes is proving them delicious. Here we have the Ancestral Method Pink Pinots, a 50/50 blend of Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris that had 10 days of carbonic maceration. 400 bottles produced so not much to go round!
End of Harvest 2020
So the grapes have been picked and vineyard is taking on its Autumnal colours. The winery has wine in various stages of bubbling away, and there is 2 minutes respite until the round of bottling starts.
The 2019 Italian wines are in bottle and the new labels look tremendous (thanks to Vanessa Stone and David Hopkins). The English wines are all coming together and looking very pretty, there will be some lovely fizzy stuff in the late Spring of 2021. All in all there is plenty to be grateful for despite the ongoing wretchedness of the global situation.
Pre-vintage 2020
As always we’re in the sprint finish phase before harvest when the To Do list seems endless but the grapes ripening is creating a rather hard deadline for getting it all done.
The Italian wines from the 2019 vintage are heading for bottle after a very restful time spent of the lees in tank. I’ll post a full update once they are safely ensconced in glass but they are looking fantastic and I’m in excited about releasing them. Right now we are looking at the last of the 2018 wines coming over from Italy so they should see us through until the new wines are ready for release. The new labels are awaiting final rubbing stamping by the legal departments, and once again I am indebted to Vanessa Stone for her artwork https://vanessastoneartist.com/ There are 3 wines/labels from 2019 in Italy, the Orange Moscato and the Barbera (aka The Italian Red) now joined by a Field Blend of indigenous Piedmontese varietals with a commissioned label (still under wraps, so big reveal later).
The English vineyard is looking terrific. It is the major project for 2020 and beyond. The Leicestershire Wolds are not perhaps the obvious place to plant vines, but there are good and compelling reasons why it works, and there are several vineyards to prove it.
We are looking after 12 year old vines (a mix of Pinots and the usual English suspects) over 2 hectares. The site is a long South facing slope with a bedrock of 200 million year old Jurassic limestone mud whose fine grained structure is mainly carbonates of coral and shell. This is overlain with 2 million year old glacial deposits featuring lumps of flint and ironstone. All in all an amazing patch, that despite the perils of English Summers has the potential to produce amazing grapes even as far North as it is. The winery is one of those jobs on the To Do list and is coming along but there are a couple or three things to get in place before we’re ready to start fermenting: nothing like a deadline. 5 weeks or so and counting!
Not Vinitaly
Late April, the cherry blossom, gorse and rapeseed is out and lots of wines are freshly bottled. Where are we? Verona for Vinitaly of course!
Except that of course we are not. Covid-19 has seen to that, so here we all are in Lockdown, and it really does seem to be everyone. The skies are free from vapour trails and the supermarkets have run out of flour. Again.
The 2019 wines from The English Winemaker are actually still in tank, which is what we had decided in any case, but the logistics of bottling are a bit interesting due to lack of staff, and well, bottles. Businesses across the world are feeling the effect, and the wine industry is no different. I should be out and about selling the end of the 2018s and drumming up interest for the 2019s, instead I’m not.
On a happy note we re-tasted the tank sample of the Field Blend, so it had been in bottle (not properly bottled, just squirted out of the tank into glass) for about 8 weeks. It has calmed down quite impressively, it is still super aromatic and the tannins are still quite feisty but there is more harmony and it definitely developing in the right way. The 2018 Dry Moscato “Mascot” was also revisited, so about 15 months in bottle, and it is looking top notch even though I say so myself.
If you are interested in getting hold of some of the 2018s (Barbera and skinsy Dry Moscato), or would like to express interest in the 2019s once there are samples available please do get in touch.
Wine labels
I am fortunate to work with Vanessa Stone for the artwork on The English Winemaker labels, and we have been choosing images of Italy for her to render in cut paper for The Italian Field Blend label.
The two images that we used on the 2018 wines will be carried forward to the 2019 versions, but there are going to be some minor changes to the names of the wines. The Barbera caused some minor issues with the board of classification for D.O.C status, which was not a big problem but it took up a lot of time and energy for no particular reason. As a result I am going to de-classify all the wines from the 2019 vintage down to Vino da Tavola, the main downside of which is that I will not be able to say “Barbera” on the label on the wine made from Barbera, but thems the rules.
The three wines from 2019 will therefore be:
- The Italian Red – 100% Barbera with the bluebell wood papercut on the label
- The Italian Orange – 100% Moscato fermented dry on skins with the wheat field papercut on the label
- The Italian Field Blend – A co-fermented blend of grapes all picked on the same day in roughly the percentages they grown in the vineyard, based on Barbera and Moscato with some Nebbiolo, Dolcetto and Gamba di Pernice. The label will feature a bespoke papercut of the Italian landscape that the wine is from.
Italian vintage recap
The 2019 vintage in Northern Italy is now complete and the wines are safely wrapped up in tank.
First pressing of Field Blend 
Free run Barbera 
Racked Moscato
The fruit for the dry Moscato “Mascot” was the very first fruit picked the season. This had the potential for the fermentation to start slowly, but actually kicked in and was merrily bubbling away within 24 hours. I slightly increased the volume of whole bunch fruit and cut back on the cap plunging but more or less the same procedure as the 2018 wine. Fewer days on skins post fermentation has led to a wine with a fine texture and a really elegant palate .
The Barbera has been fermented in the same two old tonneaux 500 litre barrels as last year. The minor finesses have been an earlier picking and fewer punch downs but otherwise a carbon copy of the successful 2018 wine. The major change for the 2019 will be that I am de-classifying out of the Italian DOC/DOP system completely. I will have significantly less paperwork to deal with, but I won’t be able to say “Barbera” on the label. Current working title is “Both Barrels” for reasons that are apparent.
New for 2019 is the Field Blend. I harvested only indigenous Piemontese varietals in roughly the proportions that they are grown in the vineyard and co-fermented them in one old tonneaux. It’s not exact, but we have roughly 35% Moscato which was all fermented as whole bunch, 35% Barbera, 10% Nebbiolo, 10% Dolcetto and 10% Gamba di Pernice (you might have to look that one up). In my head I thought I might end up with a light, chillable, smashable Summer red. It’s not even remotely turned out like that; deeply aromatic on the nose but super savoury and dense on the palate with a cobweb of superfine tannins holding it altogether. I love it and I’m slightly over excited by it considering the tiny volume made.
The intention is to release the Moscato and Field Blend in the late Spring of 2020 and the Barbera in the early Autumn of 2020. Anticipated volumes are not more than 80 cases of Moscato and Barbera and in the region of 25 cases of the Field Blend.