Time to relax and reflect on the vintage. Have we made any mistakes? Will the wines turn out OK, in particular the rosé? November is a month when you catch your breath and look back on the past year and wonder if all the hard work has really paid off.

Time to relax and reflect on the vintage. Have we made any mistakes? Will the wines turn out OK, in particular the rosé? November is a month when you catch your breath and look back on the past year and wonder if all the hard work has really paid off.

It is almost an anticlimax really as you literally work your butt off during vintage processing grapes and monitoring the wines in tank as they bubble away but at the end of the day, you do not really know if you have made great wine until the following year. Red wines require a lot more patience than white or rosé when you can see instantly if the wine is good or not! Our reds in particular do not show their true colours until 12-18 months after vintage once they have spent time in oak. Of course, you taste the wines regularly and assess their development, but it is not until the final blend has been made and the wines bottled that you really see if you have achieved what you set out to achieve.

We are delighted with the rosé this year and are on track to bottle this early in December. Both Bruno (consultant) and Jean-Paul (oenologue) are happy with the wine also and will help me get it ready in time. The rosé only just finished its fermentation before I had to leave for Japan and is now settling in tank for a couple of weeks before it is racked and filtered prior to bottling. Fingers crossed nothing will prevent us from bottling a great rosé!!

We have entered our wines into the second Concours Millésime Bio which precedes the actual event at the end of January. We were unable to present our wines last year as they were not ready and in fact are unable to submit the rosé for this reason as the judging takes place in the middle of November. We have entered our two 2006 reds - the standard AOC St Chinian Rouge and Henri (our top cuvé). Fingers crossed we will win a couple of medals with these wines. The Henri is probably a little too young but is starting to taste well so I am expecting great things from this one!

Being quite high here, we still have a few leaves on the vines until around the 3rd week of November. It is also at this time of year that we are hoping for rain to replenish the water table and prevent our vines from suffering in the Summer. In fact, we had quite a lot of rain this month, more than expected and the temperatures have started to plummet which is a sign of a cold winter to come. This is great news for the vines who really need to hibernate (lay dormant) for a couple of months. It allows them to gain strength and therefore increase their resistance to disease later on in the season. In the last two years the winters have been really quite mild (too mild in fact) and in a way, I hope it gets really cold in December through to February to really give the vines a chance to "sleep off the rigours of the previous growing season"!

I have had a wonderful rest in Japan recharging my batteries and planning for the year ahead. We would like to make some changes in the vineyard to increase our yields to 35hl/ha. We did not get there this year (again!) but we do know the vineyard is capable of increasing its yields without compromising on the quality. We are discussing ways in which we can do this with Bruno and some local producers to see how we can change the way we work in the vineyard to increase the yield.

My final verdict on this year's vintage? Well, I am pleased with the results and delighted with the rosé on a number of fronts. The reds are too young for me to really offer an opinion, but I shall put my neck on the line and say that this is probably the best vintage I have made here at Combebelle!! Time will tell.