A New Year! A new start! Fully charged and raring to go!! This year is going to be tough. Not only will we have to tighten our belts like most other businesses, but we have won two more medals for our wines and we will have a new addition to the family in June!!

A New Year! A new start! Fully charged and raring to go!! This year is going to be tough. Not only will we have to tighten our belts like most other businesses, but we have won two more medals for our wines and we will have a new addition to the family in June!!

No, it is not me - I am far too old and set in my ways and I have 55,000 "babies" to look after already!! No, my beautiful adorable niece Rachel is going to have a baby in June! She is the eldest grandchild and this will be the first great-grandchild in the family and my sister & brother-in-law will become grandparents! Can you imagine your eldest sister being a granny?!?! I was lucky to be in Australia over Christmas & New Year and spent the festive season with Rachel and her fiancé Toby in Adelaide. We were the first in the family to meet the "bump" which was very moving actually. I cannot believe I shall become a great-aunt - makes me feel 100 years old! Anyway, I shall have to create a cuvé especially for the bump when it arrives in the same way we named a wine after my gorgeous nephew, Henry.

This year we are also celebrating my parents 60th and my other sister's 30th Wedding Anniversary in June which are both fantastic milestones. What better excuse than to get together for a celebration?!?!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest as I am seriously on cloud 9 about the new addition to the family in June. Two of my friends also started off the year by adding to their families - a girl in each case!

So, what happens at Combebelle in January? Well, nothing much. Unlike a lot of growers around us, we do not prune until February. However, I have made the decision to wait until the middle of March for a number of reasons, not least because I would like to give the vine "extra down time" to increase its resistance to disease. It has also been very cold & wet here - more rain has fallen here in the last couple of months than I have seen in all the years we have been here! We are unable to go into the vineyard with any kind of machinery as it is too wet and we would ruin whatever nutrients are in the soil by compacting it too much. So, the vines are happily enjoying their "holidays". I only hope that we have not left it too late and the weather starts to warm too soon which encourages the vine to start sprouting leaves & buds!!

I spent much of January in Australia -partly on holdiay with Patrick and partly for the Master of Wine. I visited places like the Clare Valley, McLaren Vale & Tamar Valley (Tasmania) and tasted a wide range of wines during the trip to get a feel for the wines. I met some very interesting producers and one biodynamic producer which was fascinating. The MW seminar week was good and I feel more confident now about the exam, but really need to put in a lot of work if I am to sit it next year! The problem is that Combebelle just gets in the way of study and I just need to find the "balance" to allow me free time to read/write/taste.

We returned to France at the end of January, literally 2 days before the start of Millésime Bio. We arrived on the day that France was hit by severe storms in the region with winds up to 190km/hr! Motorways and roads were shut, people were advised not to venture out, shops were forced to close and lock people in to ensure their safety as the wind took hold creating destruction in its wake. Patrick and I arrived around 830pm in Montpellier after the long flight from Japan and knew nothing was up until we hit a tree on the A9! Luckily we escaped any serious injury and we were not the only vehicle to be damaged by trees. However, this was an inauspicious start to our return! Our friends, Michel & Martine, kindly loaned us their car until our van has been repaired. Sorting out insurance in France is an interesting business and requires patience! Thankfully, the van can be repaired and I should be able to collect it in a couple of weeks time.

Millésime Bio is an annual event where biodynamic / organic wine producers from all over can present their wines to buyers from around the world. Everything is on a level playing field - no multi-million stands are allowed here! We all have a simple table covered in a white tableclothe on which to present our wines. I have been coming here now for 3 years and have found new friends, new buyers and caught up with existing buyers. For Patrick, this was the first time he had ever been to a wine fair and it was an eye-opening experience for him, I think. Patrick is used to a faster pace of life and hates sitting around doing nothing! So, although we were quite busy tasting wines with people visiting our stand, there were moments when there was a lull (mainly around lunchtime which is sacred in France!) when he would try to "snare" someone to our table!

This year was good for us as we won two medals for the 2006 AOC St Chinian Rouge & Henri and were presented with another medal for the 2007 rosé. This was the first time I had put a blend of 2007 together for the "public" too and I was pleased with the reactions from tasters as the style is quite different to 2006, which is tasting really well now! All in all, we have made some new contacts in markets such as Germany, Canada and Japan. I also caught up with my ex-boss in Holland, Nico Mcgough, who has not changed a bit since I last saw him around 10 years ago! He was quite taken with our wines and I hope to start working with him in the future.

January was a month full of surprises, but the one surprise I did not expect related to the rosé. The wine has a significant tartrate deposit which is entirely natural and harmless, but looks like glass in the bottle and will put "punters" off from buying the wine. Under the NOP and Ecocert regulations, we are limited as to what we can do to stabilise the wines and cannot add metatartaric acid as a stabiliser for example. However, we can cold stabilise the wines which is what I should have been advised to do in December or if I had left the wine in tank until I returned at the end of January, I might have avoided this problem. Whereas now, we are faced with having to rebottle the rosé which will be a saga in itself and costly! I have learnt a harsh lesson here and one that I hope never to repeat. The only positive aspect of this is that the rosé is seriously great and I hope that once it is finally on the shelf, people will enjoy it as much as I do!