The vines are chest high, the puppies are nearly grown up, spring frost, medal season and English Wine Week have come and gone, and now we’re trying to get properly tidy for our youngest, Fred’s and Nora’s wedding celebration in the vineyard in, eek! Only a month!

We did have a bit of a frost, when everyone did and there were photos of candlelit vineyards in the national press, on 27th April. I was away on my annual coast path walk with girlfriends (the Jurassic Coast this year). Budburst had been early and the shoots were an inch or two long. The frost was well forecast and I woke, neurotically, hourly that night to check the temperature of the online weather station at Combwich, just a couple of miles from the vineyard, with my phone. And oh no! At around 5.30 am the temperature did dip below zero. Went on down to minus 1. So when I got home a couple of days later the vines were first stop after the statutory mugging by the pups. Yes, there were a few buds frizzled in Frost Corner. But phew, not enough to really affect the yield much. So we were luckier than many. Central England, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Hampshire seems to have done worst, but a number of Devon vineyards were reporting severe damage too.

Since then the season has continued mainly dry, fine and quite warm but with enough rain for everything to be growing well. Though this last week’s gale’s battered the soft vine growth a bit. We’re expecting flowering in ten days or so - about 10 days early.

We only entered one wine, our Elizabeth’s 2015, in the internationals this year, and were pleased to get a Bronze medal (88 points) for it from Decanter, and a Commended from the International Wine Challenge.  And then it was the UK Wine Awards, the new and shiny incarnation of the UKVA’s annual competition. We normally do quite well in that, Silvers, don’t you know! But with its new high standards, still wines didn’t get much of a look-in and we ended up being actually quite chuffed to get a Bronze. That was for the 2015 Barrel Matured - which is still maturing. We’ll release when we run out of the 2014.

English Wine Week came to an end last Sunday and were we knackered! It had been full on all week. 131 visitors and emergency labelling to keep up. Lovely to be so busy and to meet so many interesting people. The weather was mostly fine and warm - just one wet day. On the Friday we had a civilised, relaxed  evening telling our story and giving a tasting at Bridgwater Arts centre. Pictured below right is Iain delivering new English Wine Week supplies to Kelli at The Wine shop, Winscombe, “helped” by our now eight-month-old pups.

And now we are open 11-5.30 Fridays and Saturdays through the summer, though on 8th July, excitingly, we are closed for our younger son Fred’s wedding celebration to Nora. They plan a long table up the centre alley of the vineyard. Fingers crossed for the weather, and all hands to the pump keeping the vineyard extra-tidy, the flower-pots extra full and clearing barns of 30-year accumulations of stuff that might come in useful.