April showers! The first day of April started off with heavy rain and this continued pretty much for the whole month with the odd day of warm sunshine! More than 120mm of rain fell in this region which is a record!

This is a busy month for us as we work and prepare the soil, finish off the attachage and repair the trellising / posts in the vineyard. We also had to do a lot of hand weeding in the vineyard removing the larger plants (fennel & broom for example) and get rid of some of the brambles that have attached themselves to some of the vines making it impossible to work without scratching yourself! This is an on-going process really and you have to do a certain amount each year to keep the weeds/brambles from taking over the vineyard or it will look like "Jurassic Park" but without the pre-historic creatures!

We finished the pruning in the first week of April and then had to complete the attachage (attaching the canes to the wiring). Frédéric had to wait before he could start of the ploughing as the soil was too damp and dangerous for the tractor to pass through. This is very frustrating as the rain, combined with warm weather, encourages grass, weeds etc to grow like mad and as a biodynamic vineyard we have to do our "weed control" without the use of chemicals, so have to do this mechanically and/or by hand. As the pruning was quite late, we were behind which has a catalytic effect on the rest of the work needing to be done. However, by the end of the month we had just about managed to get up to date and indeed complete our first spraying!

I had a visit from Stephen Skelton MW who had never before been to Combebelle so of course I had to do the "grand tour and tasting" which was fun!

We also sold the last of the 2004 Vin de Pays d'Oc which is a relief! However, we nothing to replace this we might now consider making a small quantity for Vin de Pays d'Oc in 2009. Sales have picked up in France which is great news, especially as we are now getting more press coverage for our wines.

The 2008s are still in hibernation - in other words, the malo-lactic has not yet started! This is mainly due to the cold weather and does not cause too much concern as there is no immediate hurry! However, with each sunny day we leave the winery doors open to aerate and warm up the winery in the hope that this might encourage the little bacterias to get to work.

The 2007s are still "resting" in tank and we are now starting to ponder when we should be bottling this wine. We are planning for May/June, before the heat of the summer kicks in as it is not wise to transport/ship wine when it is too hot (it make "cook" and turn into mulled wine!!). This wine is lighter than 2006 in terms of alcohol and tannin which means that it will appeal more readily. The wine is definitely a keeper too for those who would like to cellar it. We are also considering how to bottle Henri - do we go for magnums or bottles? Anyway, we have a little more time before we have to make the final decision.

We had a great article in The Independent featuring Combebelle in combination with wine tourism! Although some of the facts were not quite right, the overall article is good and has already attracted some interest for the gite in particular.

The cellar door is starting to pick up too and I hope that we will be reasonably busy during the Summer especially as the gite is being let out. Our first summer guests arrive in mid-May so we are busy getting everything sorted for their stay, including opening up the pool ready for the season and planting lots of tubs around the place to add a dash of colour!

I had scheduled another trip to Japan this month to see Patrick and also to do some winetastings with our importer there. It was an interesting experience as they do things slightly differently in Japan. The event was organised by Sopexa in Japan and there were a mixture of producers looking for importers and importers/wholesalers presenting their range of French wines. The event was open to everyone, so I had a chance to see some of the restaurants, shops and wholesalers selling our wine. I met some really interesting people there and our wines, including the rosé, went down a treat!

Below is a link to the article featured in The Independent: