Hannah starts to get cold feet as she starts her sixth year of harvesting – this time with a proper cellar and all!
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Rage against the machine
Hannah outlines why vineyard work can be incredibly divorced from the end product, and has some suggestions on how it can be rehumanised
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Hand harvesting isn’t the half of it
I hate the hoorah implied by ‘hand-picked’. I hate it more round about the fourth-plus week of repetitive vineyard work. At the worst of times in the vines, ‘bored’ is an understatement. But ‘hand-picked’ is a misrepresentation. Not everything is blockbuster work but everything is done by hand — and once you’ve completed one task, in a couple weeks you’ll be back at the same vine again.
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Natural wine is no longer enough
Hannah argues that the new natural wine charter is a missed opportunity to make a radical statement – about how natural wine can push forward to the next frontier
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Society is dead, long live conviviality
Tonight I will be late for my first drinking-with-someone-on-FaceTime-date which I know because even though it seems like everything is different, some things will never change. Other things are not so the same.
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No one makes wine alone
This is what I learned from harvest 2019: Don’t judge a man by what he’s got tattooed on his face (in this case, A.C.A.B) Supermarket salad crates also work for harvesting grapes and are cheaper than caisse I don’t want a pneumatic press You don’t make wine alone. I learned technical things too, as well
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The earth is burning, this is not a drill
Today we ran out of water which is just as well because it provided the first line to a piece I’ve been putting off since since the mercury overdosed on too many degrees. Call it procrastination, meltdown or depression, but the question remains the same: How to start when the conclusion is the end? Before
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Fear and pruning Part 2 – Don’t strangle the vines
Hannah explains why just one wrong move with the secateurs could herald disaster for the vineyard
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Le Saint Eutrope (my perfect little bistro)
Some kids get the itch to become astronauts but when I’m grown up I want to be Harry Lester. Once I am I’ll open my perfect little bistro. A tear-the-paper-off-the-table, stoneware carafe and colourful brocante-deco affair, doesn’t matter where so long as it’s hard to get to, oh – and in France. I will dress
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Fear and pruning in Beaujolais
Hannah continues her winemaking adventures, but as she enters the 8th week of pruning in Beaujoalis, starts to suffer from increasing doubt about whether she’s made the right choice in life.