Harvest 2006 day 2. Here's the story. Adriaan planted a vineyard 5 years ago, and hes been making wine from it. I've not seen him for more than a decade, but he finds out I've got into wine big time, and this year he hasn't the time to process the grapes. He generously offers them to me. I was expecting to make a tiny amount of wine from my allotment. Now I have the grapes from a modest vineyard to work with. They needed harvesting this weekend, which coincided with the birthday of my son and the 40th of a close friend of Fiona's, hence time has been tight.

Yesterday we harvested perhaps half the vineyard. Today we did another quarter. I was up last night until 2 am processing some grapes. It's called a learning curve. The weather has been ideal. We were harvesting in dry overcast conditions yesterday; warm and sunny today. Adriaan's vineyard has four varieties: Dornfelder and Regent (red); Seyval Blanc and Riechensteiner (white). Because of ripeness levels I'm blending both varieties of each colour together - the aim is to achieve balance by this prefermentation blending rather than by use of additions and fakery. More later - need to go and watch Spooks.