From Local Vine to Local Wine - 2022 Vintage a year in the cycle

Curload Vineyard was established over 30 years ago, situated in the quiet leafy hamlet just outside Stoke St Gregory in Somerset. |After several years of searching for a parcel of land My wife and I fell in love with the place and bought the vineyard in February 2021, we were looking for land that we could use to plant Christmas trees for a retirement project and like the majority of people our only experience with wine was choosing which one to put in the trolley on the weekly shop.

So after much "You tube" research we jumped head on in to looking after the vineyard and ended up with 1.4 tonnes of grapes that we harvested in October. So with got somethings right!

The grapes are being processed by a Gloucester based winery and we should be taking delivery in a few weeks of the 2021 Vintage so watch this space.

This blog will take you through the process from the winter pruning through to hopefully taking delivery of the 2022 vintage, we are not experts, we will make some mistakes along the way, but hopefully you can take the journey with us and finally like us enjoy the results.

Firstly meet the family, My name is Paul and my wife is Paula, you will see us down the land every couple of weeks with Digby and Alfie our two canine helpers.... well help might be a stretch, but they enjoy the land as much as we do.

David and Grace are our grown up children and are often found helping out with Isobelle and Charlotte, along with a multitude of friends and family.

The 2022 Vintage starts in the early months of this year, once the leaves have fallen the vines lay dormant during the winter months, and start to bud in the spring.

Our Vines are grown as cordons, this means that you have a central stem, which divides into two and grows along the lower tier of the support wires.

Bunches of grapes only grow on last years growth, but as you will see, boy do they grow! so the first phase is to prune back to spurs, which are essentially 2 buds. from last years growth.

The first time we did this, we were sure we had killed the vines, only been here 30 years, and we had destroyed them in less than 30 days..... but we did not need to worry grape vines are resiliant and can survive even the most niave of barbers...