Bitterly cold days, harsh northerly winds and in between some glorious sunny days! This is a typical January in the South of France, or more accurately - Combebelle. The most important "job" this month was to prepare the rosé for bottling and ensure we did not encounter the same disaster as last year with tartrate!

Being organic and governed by a set of rules and regulations restricts us in how we actually make wine. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact, I am rather for it but when you have a problem you need to be able to respond to this quickly. Being organic means that you rely on "Mother Nature" for a helping hand. And so it was with the rosé which we had left undisturbed in tank since its finaly racking in November. The cold spell in December which continued through into January helped precipitate the tartrates from the wine so that when we finally came to rack it just before bottling, we found that the tank was covered in a layer of tartrate almost half an inch thick. Rather in the tank than in the bottle, though!

This year's rosé is slightly paler in colour and is produced from 100% saignée or free run juice. We have the same aromatic profile of red berries. Nice soft palate and lively acidity. We are very pleased with this wine coming from a difficult vintage for us and hope that once it finally reaches the market, it will provide the consumer with a memorable glass!

We had decided not to present at Millésime Bio this year mainly because we were unsure about whether or when we would move back to Europe (Sweden!). Normally we would be at this annual event to meet with existing buyers and hopefully encourage new ones to buy Combebelle!

The pruning was on schedule which is good as we were keen to finish 90% of this before the end of February. In fact, we are on target to complete this by the middle of February which is even better! This means that in theory the bud burst/flowering should happen a little earlier and maybe bring the harvest forward by a week or so depending on the weather during the ripening season. This would allow us to pick a little earlier and therefore reduce some of the risks we have in October with rainfall and lower night temperatures which affect the ripening process and health of the grapes just prior to picking.

We are happy with the work done in the vineyard and now have to plan when Frédéric comes in for the broyage (chopping up of the vine cuttings) and then ploughing these back into the soil.

The reds had also just about finished their MLF so we would have to rack them several months before we had actually planned to do so and working wines like this in winter is not necessarily the best thing. But, you have no alternative really as you cannot leave the wine on the lees - it will start to become quite reductive which provides more work later on to get rid of this.

We also decided to finally renovate our house and had several meetings / discussions with builders about what to do. We finally went with a small independent outfit with a friend of ours, Simon, who would be the Project Manager. This is all very exciting as at last we shall have a proper kitchen rather than a small oven/hot plate on which to cook on! Not that I am complaining or anything and I have managed to cater for 20 people with the bare minimum, but to have a nicely fitted out kitchen is probably the best present I could ask for at this moment in time!

Work started at the end of the month and the project should be completed by the end of April/begin May! However, we have not really allowed for any contingencies such as problems with plumbing or changing our minds or adding something else to the project, so who knows what will happen over the next few months!