« Treading Grapes » !
After an eventful few months having to face many challenges on the way, I was finally looking forward to bringing in our first harvest at Combebelle.

The weather during the growing season had been hot with temperatures reaching 45°C in the shade during July. However, the grapes were given time to recover during August when the temperatures were hovering around the mid-20°C. This slowed things down a lot and we were nearly back on schedule but then just as we were about to start picking, the heavens opened and delayed us by 3 days. In the end, we had to rush to pick everything and had to leave half the crop hanging on the Grenache because of rot. However, the quality of the juice was extraordinary and I knew that we could make a great start to our future at Combebelle.

I have not been involved in a harvest since 1986 when I worked in Bordeaux ! At least the last experience related to red winemaking which would help. I decided to use the two large open top wooden barrels for the two Syrah plots I had selected to use in the AOC wine and put the Grenache into one of the tanks. It was a great opportunity for me to see how these parcelles would evolve and what they could bring to the blend in terms of character, fruit and structure. I chose La Cave and Les Cerisiers for this and have been impressed with the quality from the outset. Les Cerisiers in particular is a star and will certainly make an impact on the final blend when we come to do this in a year’s time.
I had a lot of fun working in the winery and although I made some stubborn errors, the quality of our first vintage is good and I am pleased with the results. I can see obvious room for improvement which is a good thing too. One thing I would like to change for next year is to replace the large and cumbersome tanks with smaller ones so that I can vinify each parcelle separately in future. Whether or not I can realise this for next year ‘s harvest, I don’t know. A lot will depend on cashflow and sales realised over the next few months !

At about the same time as we were finishing off the wines, Felix & Giselle decided to move. They found a lovely house near Trèbes which is not too far away so I can still pop over for the occasional meal ! Giselle is a seriously great French country cook and really enjoys cooking. Both will be sorely missed.
We made the decision to extend our working relationship with Sylvie & Christian by offering them a 10 month contract for the next «season » starting in October. I had been impressed with their loyalty and love of Combebelle and the quality of their work is excellent. This meant that I could leave for Japan knowing that the place would be looked after. It would also give them some security for the coming year in terms of work.
I had also decided not to use the same people as last year for the pruning. Instead, Christian would be doing this with Sylvie and Stephane, with Louisa helping to remove the old canes. For the remainder of the contract, Sylvie & Christian would do most of the work in the vineyard themselves with the occasional help provided for by Louisa. If this works out we would like to offer them both a 2 year contract with us to provide continiuty here which we feel is important.

With high expectations, I started entering our wines into competitions – mainly the 2005 AOC St Chinian which I felt had the best chance of winning. On returning back from our holiday in Tahiti I discovered that we had won our first Gold medal for the 2005 AOC St Chinian! You can not imagine my excitement and growing confidence that we would win more medals and start seriously selling the wines now. The next day I received our first order for Sweden, so things are starting to look up now ! However, sometimes you have to be patient, especially when it comes to selling.

I exhibited for the first time at Millésime Bio this year and shared a table with Virgile Joly who provided me many funny stories when we were not looking after prospective buyers ! He was made « famous » by Patrick Moon’s book « Virgile ‘s Vineyard » which I had read a few years ago with great amusement. Maybe one day someone will also write a book on Combebelle ?!

I met a lot of new and old friends & acquaintenances at this event and for a first outing was quite confident of finding buyers for our wines.
With things running well at Combebelle I can afford more time with Patrick in Japan this year. It will also provide me with an opportunity to see how we can develop this market for Combebelle, too.