Having had a mild December and January, February & March were much colder and brought some much needed rain (and some snow) to replenish the water table.

Having had a mild December and January, February & March were much colder and brought some much needed rain (and some snow at Easter!) to replenish the water table.

Thankfully the pruning is finished and we can focus on completing the "attachage" and ploughing in of the prune cuttings.

At this time of year you see a lot of white and yellow flowers in the vineyard too which are part of the eco-system and once died down will be ploughed back into the soil adding valuable nutrition. I intend to plant more of these deliberately in other parts of the vineyard and will also look into a Summer cover crop which might boost the natural environment here too.

There has been a lot of work in the winery / cellar too � racking the 2007 wines off their lees and adding SO2 to help preserve the wine. If you leave the wine on its lees too long it will start to affect the wine � a tell tale sign is a reductive aroma or slight rotten egg smell. This is when the wine is in need of air to liven/freshen it up a bit and the addition of SO2 will prevent the wine from oxidation and spoilage.

Being organic we do the minimum required without compromising on the quality of the end product.

We also transferred the 2006 wine in barrel into tank in preparation for bottling at the end of March and put a couple of tanks of the 2007 wine into the same barrel. Being older barrels the wine will not attract too much wood tannins but the ageing process is slightly oxidative and can add complexity to the final wine. Unfortunately, we could not invest in barrels this year but we will be buying in a large quantity of new and 1-year-old barrels for the 2008 vintage. We shall also be buying some larger barrels called �demi-muid� which are 500-600 litres and will initially be used for Syrah/Cabernet Sauvignon and then Grenache as I would prefer the Grenache to have less contact with the wood.

We are also starting to think ahead for this year�s vintage and what changes we could make in the winery without incurring too much expense! We know we have to invest in a new press and cooling facility this year as we cannot afford to risk the existing press breaking down as it did last year and our cooling system has truly died and gone to �heaven�! We would like to replace the remaining free-standing large tanks for smaller ones if possible, too, as this will give me greater flexibility. It will also be easier for me to work with as I know one day I will seriously topple over into one of the tanks � they are just too big and the only way to remove lids etc is to climb up the ladder and when you are on your own this can be a rather precarious exercise! I also find it difficult to remove the lids and although I am quite strong I am literally hanging off the rope in a vain effort to pull the lid up! You would think with my curvaceous figure (I am seriously not the size 0 type of girl!!) that the effect of weight would aide my efforts, but alas the lids are rather more temperamental and obstinate and are not keen to cooperate. Even Frederic who helps me out sometimes finds them difficult and he is a strapping young lad!

With running a business there is a great deal of paperwork, especially so in France. Yet, I seriously feel that in this day and age a lot of this could be done online and much quicker. However, when you make a suggestion to this affect to say the Customs & Excise people they look at you as if you are an alien and say that in France we do it this way and in duplicate if you please! I am slowly getting used to this but it can be frustrating at times. However, when you are trying to get a subsidy or something it is a different matter all together and the more complicated it is the better as far as they are concerned. It is like having to jump through hoops or race the Grand National twice before finally getting to the winning post.

I am trying to get a subsidy for the vineyard although I am not entirely sure what it is � I have just been told I should do it as it will save me money in the long run. Now, we are not talking about thousands of Euros here, just �300-400 maybe. And, being English does not help either! I think the French take a dim view on a foreigner applying for a French subsidy to be honest, but my view is that if my neighbour can apply for one, then so can I as I pay my taxes, too! Hopefully, I will succeed in getting this subsidy despite the efforts I need to go through in order to get it. I will keep you all posted but don�t hold your breath!

For some reason, I am very unlucky when it comes to computers. I had to rebuild my old laptop several times throughout the 3 years I had it, but I thought that with my lovely new HP laptop I would be free of such bad luck. I have no idea what, how or why, but the new laptop decided to slow down to a grinding halt in January and I had to get the man in to fix it � or in this case, rebuild it. Now, if you are lucky enough to have broadband this is not such an onerous task, but with dial-up you might as well get settled in for a long time as it takes ages and ages to reboot and download the software. After several hours and cups of tea we finally rebuilt the laptop and thankfully (touch wood) no further problems have occurred.

Remember the court case pending in March with our ex-employees? Well, due to their lawyer not having had all the information or whatever to justify their application or case the tribunal is setting another date and we are changing our lawyer! We have never been happy with the lawyer we found via Bruno as he gave the impression that we did not matter and this was just the norm for him. Patrick likes to have his questions answered and problems analysed and solutions found. He does not like to be fobbed off which our lawyer has been doing. So, Charlotte (the lady winemaker in Spain) kindly passed on a contact in Béziers who seems to be much more on the ball. This could go on for months/years which is normal in France but both parties have to pay and I am not sure if our ex-employees can afford to continue with this. We shall see.

Patrick arrived for a week over Easter and stayed long enough to help with the bottling! This was the first time I had actually been present for the bottling and I had been organising the delivery of labels, bottles, cartons etc for weeks. However, despite planning, ordering and organising things months in advance, we encountered problems with the labels again. But, this time I was in France and not in Japan so I literally had to spend a lot of the time on my mobile making sure that everyone involved knew that if the labels were not delivered on time heads would roll! All this was happening whilst I was in Bordeaux on a MW study trip, which did not make me that popular as the phone kept on going and I had to take calls during visits. Needless to say, all the "dry goods" arrived on time the day before but the guy delivering the bottles refused to cooperate so I had to call in the "calvalry" a.k.a. Frederic to come and assist unloading the pallets of bottles with the tractor. Honestly, some people are just plane awkward and uncooperative to the point where you would like to shake some sense into them.
Patrick had never before seen such a "spectacle" and all 14 pallets were put in front of the house blocking our lovely view.

The following day QVS turned up with their new mobile bottling facility and after some deliberation parked the lorry along side the winery. This left a very tight space for the tractor to manoeuver the pallets of bottles on to the loading bay on the side of the lorry. Cyril came along to help Frederic - he is the guy that cannot sit still for more than 5 minutes at a time! It took QVS a couple of hours to set up, clean the filters and starting pumping the wine through. Because I had literally just blended the tanks together the wine was a little "troubled" so we had to change the filters every 20hl or so which did not please the QVS guys and you could hear the mutterings all day - some of which probably related to the fact that was an "ignorant English would-be vigneronne who should know better!".

In an absolute panic first thing in the morning, I called Bruno and Jean-Paul (oenologue) for advice and assistance. Both of them responded to the damsel in stress and came to the rescue - or rather, more to calm down my nerves!

We decided to bottle & label Cuvée Henri first but literally 5 minutes into this the labelling machine decided to play up and no matter what we tried or changed it would not work. Basically, it was not positioning the labels correctly on the bottle and would then add 2 or 3 more labels at the same time which rather defeats the purpose. This caused much frustration and concern as time was ticking away and we had only 2 days to complete the job. It took several hours and several men to figure out what the problem was and to correct it. Needless to say, my input was neither sought after or required!

We managed to complete Cuvée Henri, bottle and label a part of the 2006 St Chinian and label both the remaining 2005 red and 2007 rosé before calling it a day. Patrick could see first hand what we have to deal with and how problems just occur for no apparent reason and he mucked in too, breaking on one bottle in the process and neaerly getting sacked for it much to the amusement of everyone around us!

The second day went much better as we were only bottling the remaining 2006 and stacking them on plastic trays (15 layers of 40 bottles) and putting them into the storage place (a.k.a. the garage). The day before, Frederic & Cyril had spent the hours when we could not label to clean/tidy up the garage in preparation for the addition of 25 pallets! They did a stirling job and the garage although full has some order to it.

We were extremely lucky with the weather as it was dry & sunny for the 2 days and we completed the job!

Thank you to everyone who participated and helped!