Did you ever wonder why French winemakers never reply to your email? Hannah has the answer, explained from the winemaker’s point of view.
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Between the frost and a hard place
Hannah reflects on the April frost that has wiped out up to 80% of France’s wine for 2021
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Four wines and a wormhole
Hannah thinks she’s opened some kind of portal by calling up memories of 2020’s four most momentous wines. And we’re not going argue!
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My harvest starts in X days & I’m getting cold feet
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