The wines were coming to the end their first fermentation, the weather was starting to cool down and the leaves were starting to fall off the vines heralding the start of autumn at Combebelle.

The racking of the wine off the skins or "decuvage" required the tanks to have to finished their alcoholic fermentation. With the sugar levels higher this year and projected alcohol levels therefore much higher than average we had to literally "coax" some of the tanks to finish their fermentation albeit painstakingly slow. Being organic/biodynamic we cannot intervene with the fermentation other than using a prescribed yeast to help control the process which we did this year.

We also made a change in terms of temperature, maintaining an average of 25C during the fermentation in part to protect the yeasts and in part to see if this would prevent some reduction in the wine, particularly with the Syrah at this early stage. We also did a couple of rackings at the beginning of the fermentation process, drawing the juice off the skins and leaving them in a separate tank overnight before pumping it back into the tank the following morning. We had one "problem" tank which for most of its fermentation was "reductive" but with a lot of work (and some praying on my part) we managed to get rid of this and the wine has actually turned out exceptionally well!

One of my concerns this year was the high sugar levels and potential alcohol in the final wine. With most producers around me struggling with tanks which were predicted to be in the region of 17% or more, I was really worried about some of our tanks that were predicted to reach 16%! One way of trying to balance out the final alcohol in the wine is to blend it with another tank at a lower predicted alcohol which we did, reducing the alcohol by 0.5%. However, I think the average alcohol level stated on the label for the 2009 vintage will be 15%! So long as the wine is balanced, this should not pose any problem.

Ben, who has had more experience with this, kept on reassuring me that it would be all right and that the tanks would finish and we would have no problem with "stuck ferments". He was right with one exception - one of the Grenache wines still has a little residual sugar in it which we hope will disappear or be consumed in time. We are not in any hurry to bottle the wine as it still needs to age in barrel/tank for at least another year by which time it should be "dry".

Yohanna & Frederic finished off the decuvage in my absence and filled most of the barrels. We managed to extract more wine than I had originally calculated which is great. The rose is ready to be bottled but we will keep it in tank for a little while yet and then bottle it in January (not making the same mistake as last year!).

In Japan, I was kept busy! We hosted a 1996 Bordeaux wine tasting the week after I returned and the following day, we presented our wines along side our importer to a group of 60 guests at the Kobe Club which was great fun and we sold lots of wine which is even better! And, our rose is being featured in a gourmet magazine here for the first time, which considering rose is not a big seller in Japan, is great news. Our importer has also presented our wines at a couple of organised events in Tokyo this month with some excellent reviews.