The temperatures keep rising, the vines keep sprouting and we start to wish for rain! Actually, this reminds me of the song "Summertime" performed by Ella Fitzgerald! We are literally sizzling here in the South of France - thank goodness we have a pool to cool us down!!

With the majority of the work now finished in the vineyard, we start to look forward to this year's harvest and planning ahead as to what we shall produce. With this in mind, you reflect on the quality of fruit you harvested in previous years and to the resultant wines and ponder what you can do this time around.

We have been keen to add another red wine to our portfolio - a lighter, unoaked version of the traditional Saint Chinian we produce. Many of our clients have asked us for this so we have decided to finally take the plunge and specifically produce a red wine which is cold fermented and ready to drink in the Summer following the harvest (unlike the traditional red which is not released before its 2nd birthday after vintage!).

It is also at this time of year that we start to calculate probable yields based on the number of bunches per vine. This year the yields look to be lower than average throughout France and in particular our region, which is not good news for us at Combebelle where our yields struggle to get near 30hl/ha! However, looking at the vineyard we believe we shall achieve 25-30hl/ha perhaps more in some plots which would be good. Much will depend on the weather and whether or not we will have any rainfall between now and harvest time. We had a tiny amount this month, enough to just about quench the thirst of the vines but more is needed as some of the vines (particularly those on the exposed "calcaire rouge" soils) are beginning to show some water stress.

The other effect of it being so warm throughout the day and night with little or no rainfall could bring the harvest forward by a week or two. At present, we calculate our harvest starting sometime after the 20th September rather than at the end of September which would be at least 8-10 days ahead of a "normal" vintage, or least what we have experienced here in the last 4 years. We shall be picking by machine mostly this year as we feel the results are neither better nor worse for doing so in comparison to hand-picking. Hand picking is only good when you have a really good and conscientious team working for you and another team at the winery sorting out bunches on a selection table before they are destalked and pumped into the tanks. Our neighbouring producer has one of the newest machine harvesters that also destalks which means you can eliminate this process at the winery (and means that I do not have to spend 2-3 hours at night cleaning this before the next day!!).

We cannot do all of our 15ha but it would be interesting to see the difference between this and the other machine we shall be using. The grafted plot might be picked by hand only to protect the new vines from any damage that might be inflicted by a machine. Our other Grenache plot might also be picked by hand if the machine cannot do this – it is quite stony and steep!

With our gîte fully occupied now until mid-September, I am quite busy looking after our guests and making sure that they have everything they need. Kasia is a god-send helping me out with this and I could not do it without her! So far, all our guests have enjoyed the experience of staying on a vineyard and have not seemed to mind the "isolation" too much. There are plenty of activities to do around here and coming back after a day exploring to enjoy our pool is probably the best thing about staying here, as well as a glass of rosé with the resident vigneronne! We have had several enquiries for 2010 already and I will probably start taking bookings in September judging by the eager correspondence I am having.

In July, I attended an event organised by Sud de France in London focused on female winemakers from the Languedoc-Roussillon. I was not the only "foreigner" in the party, there was a winemaker from Holland and some of the French winemakers had come from outside the region! There were 12 of us in all presenting our wines in the Maison des Vins in Central London. Many of the UK wine press and buyers attended the event and Combebelle proved to be quite popular (maybe being an English women making wine in France helped??!!??). As a result of this, we will start working with one of the UK's largest retailers from October onwards which made it all the worth while attending. And there is also an opportunity with another retailer who are now interested in working with us, so again, watch this space!

Combebelle in the press: