As we look around the vineyard today, it is impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of relief as we compare what is in front of us, to what we were up against at this time last year.

The pruning is complete, the vines are tied, the cuttings are chipped and the vineyard is prepped and ready for the growing season ahead of us. We still have, and will likely have for many years to come, a very long “to do” list. But, with 2014 behind us, the journey ahead doesn’t seam quite as daunting.

The most exciting thing about the journey in front of us is, that in a week we will have the adventure of 2014 captured in bottle! Not only do the wines of 2014 mark an amazing milestone for us and the beginning of what promises to be an incredible journey. The wines of Emandare, our home and new life, created on this special piece of land taste absolutely delicious.

Here (video below) is a glimpse of what the 2014 growing season looked like to create the delicious wines that you will soon be able to enjoy.
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As much as we have enjoyed keeping all of you up to date through the blog ( . . . in all our spare time . . . ). This will be our last post on WeBoughtAVineyard.ca. Please make sure to sign up for our newsletter and like us on Facebook for the coming launch of our website
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Now you are probably wondering what yummy products we will have available this spring:

 The 2014 Siegerrebe Gewürztraminer – Our signature estate white wine is hand harvested and a field blend of 80% Siegerrebe and 20% Gewurztraminer grapes. This is a lively expression of Emandare’s nature. Enjoy delicate tropical flavours, floral aromas and hints of fresh wild herbs.

 The 2014 Sauvignon Blanc – Our Sauvignon Blanc is grown in the warmest area of the vineyard. The summer of 2014 gave us beautifully ripe fruit to create this unique expression of Emandare’s nature. Enjoy juicy stone fruit and melon flavours with a kiss of kiwi, lime and fresh grass.

The 2014 Rosé - Our Rosé is hand harvested and a field blend of 55% Cabernet Libre, 26% Tempranillo, 13% Malbec and 6% Carmenere grapes. Not your typical Rosé, this is a wild expression of Emandare’s nature. Enjoy flavours of wild field berries, watermelon and pomegranate.

The 2014 Grapple – This is a very limited release product that we will make every year. (For legal reasons we can’t call it cider, but honestly that is what it is.) We took all of the apples from our orchard and blended them with some of our siegerrebe and gewürztraminer grapes to create a fresh and lively sparkling cider. If you want to know what it tastes like, you’ll have to get your hands on it. First come, first serve.

Our red wines are still in barrel and won’t be ready until a later date. They are already showing great promise. The Pinot Noir is going to be a beautiful, delicate expression of what Emandare has to offer.

The 2014 Pinot Noir – The consistently warm days and cool nights of 2014 were ideal conditions for our Pinot Noir. Hand harvested, fermented in neutral French oak puncheons and aged neutral French oak barrels, our Pinot Noir captures the delicate nature of Emandare. Enjoy clean flavours of cranberry, raspberry and apple with hints of wild mushrooms and stoney soil.

The Marechal Foch is a bold expression of Emandare’s nature.

 The 2014 Marechal Foch – Our signature estate red wine is hand harvested and a field blend of 86% Marechal Foch and 14% Cabernet Foch grapes. This is a bold expression of Emandare’s nature. Enjoy rich black current and blueberry flavours with fresh herbs, pepper and clean minerality.

Thank you so much for following along with our adventure and for all of the continued support. 2015 HERE WE COME!

Mike & Robin

We had four separate harvests to bring in our crop. What is significant about the separate harvests of 2014 is the fact that we could choose what dates we harvested. I’ll explain. Vancouver Island is considered a cool-climate wine region. There are certain varieties of grapes you grow in a region like this that do very well in a cool climate, but you usually have to let the grapes hang on the vine as long as possible in order to get them as ripe as the vintage will allow. 2014 was different. We had the privilege of having four separate harvests based around picking individual varieties when they were ready to be picked. So instead of letting everything hang until the last minute, then panic and harvest everything before it’s taken over by rot, we got to harvest beautifully ripe grapes that were in pristine condition, free of any damage from predators, mildew, or rot. Needless to say, 2014 was a great year for us to kick things off.

So, what happens next? There are buckets and buckets, and more buckets of grapes piling up on the crush pad. For the white wines, the grapes were put through the crusher/de-stemmer (pretty self explanatory what it does) then the must (crushed grapes, skins, seeds, juice) goes into the press, which separates the juice from everything else, and is pumped into stainless steel tanks in preparation for fermentation.  The reds went through a similar, but less complicated process. They were crushed and de-stemmed and the must was placed in various vessels for fermentation. This is all pretty standard practice for wine making, what happens next is where we have chosen to do things a little less conventional than standard industry practice.

If you have been following us so far, then you are well aware that we are farming out vineyard organically with a focus on natural and sustainable practices. For us, we naturally wanted to carry these practices over into our wine making. For thousands of years wine was made by simply allowing the grapes to do what they do naturally on their own- make wine. Through a lot of research and past experiments, we realized that organically farmed grapes come with all the necessary components to make wine. Among these components is yeast.

In conventional winemaking, after crush you toss in commercial yeast that will attack the sugars in the fruit and convert it to alcohol. This is a very smart and safe way of winemaking that gives the winemaker control of many variables that will contribute to the flavour profile of the finished wine.

From the moment we moved on to this vineyard, we felt there was something very special about this piece of land. We knew early on that we wanted to use old world wine making techniques to show off what this vineyard has to offer. This is our first vintage making a commercial volume of wine, so this decision wasn’t made lightly. Fortunately, we have had help from our friend, Michael Bartier, a winemaker from the Okanagan who has many years in the business and a passion for making natural wines.

Back to our crush pad. The grapes have been processed and are ready for fermentation. Remember, we had four separate harvests. The first ferment was our estate white blend. Michael gave me a quote from an old world wine maker; “Sometimes we have to have the courage to do nothing.” So that is what we did. Fingers crossed that our first ferment would kick on its’ own. A couple of days went by, nothing was happening. A couple more days went by, still nothing. We were getting a little nervous. A few more days went by, still no activity. By this point nervous was a huge understatement. Around the ten day mark Mike was pretty much losing his mind. At this point we were feeling pretty far away from courageous and a lot closer to; “HOLY CRAP! What are we doing!” . . . . . . Then day twelve there were slight signs of fermentation. We breathed a little lighter. Finally on day 14, two weeks after harvest, fermentation kicked off in full force! You cannot imagine the relief that we felt. What’s more, the ferment carried on text book all the way through to dry. From that point forward, every ferment went exactly how it should and every single one of them was done 100% naturally.

(A fact for the wine nerds out there: These wines were made in a brand new, clean facility with no previous wine making or pre-existing yeast cultures in the building.)

As mentioned before, the whites were fermented in big stainless steel tanks. The reds were partly fermented in large very un-sexy food grade plastic bins. They were also partly fermented in very sexy old oak puncheons, which are 500L barrels upright with the head taken out of them. This is also an old world technique that works incredibly well. We can’t wait until our winery is full of old puncheons.

Currently all of the wines are resting in tanks and barrels in the winery waiting the appropriate amount of time to age before bottling. Here is where I will be brutally honest with you. So much is out of your control when allowing wine to do things naturally, and it is anybody’s guess how the wine will turn out. Well guess what . . . . The wines taste amazing! And we can’t wait to share them with you.

To see what else we’ve been up to in the midst of wine making check out PART 2. (Spoiler: We Have a Name!)

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Contrary to popular belief, our vineyard is not called We Bought A Vineyard. Several months ago we decided on a name but were waiting to share it until we had our branding developed. We are pleased to announce that our vineyard is named: Emandare Vineyard. (em / an / dare)

This was a difficult process. We spent countless hours discussing and researching possible names. Any name that we both agreed on was already taken. There are no English words that describe this place and the feeling of being here, so we created our own word that has no prior meaning so is can only mean this place. This is also fitting as our wine and all that goes into it is from this place.

Once we settled on a name the fun began! We are privileged to be working with Victoria De Vries from Young Color (www.youngcolour.com) designing our word mark, labels, website, sign etc. . . . We will keep you posted as these develop. We are so excited to soon put up a proper sign in place of the piece of plywood with our address on it.

When we’re not working on branding or the wines, Mike is making headway on insulating the winery and working on the tasting room. We are also gearing up for some major landscaping in the new year to increase our car park capacity.

As 2014 draws to a close we are reminded of what an incredible rollercoaster year it has been. We are so grateful for every moment here and all of the people that have helped us along the way. Here’s to 2015 and all the adventures it is sure to bring.

Merry Christmas,

Robin & Mike

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As you likely noticed from our last post, that consisted of mostly pictures and bullet points (all we had time for), that our summer was, well, the best word that comes to mind is insane. Honestly, I’m not sure that really does it justice. When chatting with friends and family about the summer we use the following analogy:

It was like riding a bike up a huge hill. Making the mental decision to conquer the hill was so exciting. The first part of the hill feels pretty cool and you think to yourself, “This isn’t so bad.” About half way up the hill you begin to feel a little tired, but you remain positive and excited to reach the top. Around the ¾ mark you realize that your legs are burning, you are sweating and breathing pretty hard. The hill now seems way longer than you initially thought (even though you are way closer to the top). Then you turn the final corner and can see the top. All the observers around you can see how far you’ve come and are cheering you on. They can also see how little of a climb you have left. But it’s virtually impossible to focus on the top because it takes all your mental and physical energy to get your next pedal in front of the last one. At this point, what keeps you going is the memory of how excited you were to take this hill in the first place. What is crazy is this simple thought gives you the final burst of energy you need to reach the top!

We will be the first to tell you that the ride is far from over and that first hill climb was only the beginning. There are likely many more hills to come. Right now, and for the past month, we have been cruising along the top of the hill with an amazing view of what we have accomplished so far and have an incredibly clear view of the exciting journey ahead of us.

Ok, enough of the cycling analogy. The last month of our journey was been nothing short of amazing! Here is what the top of our hill has looked like.

Sept 14, 2014 7:00 am. A group of amazing volunteers arrived at our doorstep to help us bring in our first harvest!

“As I write this I am reminded of the emotions that I felt that morning. Definitely felt choked up from joy. I did my best to hold it back, as a rugged farmer should.”

That day we harvested two fairly early ripening varieties, Siegerrebe and Gewurztraminer, both of which came in by the tons. To me, the biggest problem of the day was running out of buckets, which is a pretty great problem to have. However, I think the biggest problem for our volunteers was the temperature outside reached 27 degrees Celsius! Needless to say, a lot of cold beer was consumed that afternoon.

A huge personal highlight for me was having my long time partner in wine, Mike Rathjen, alongside me in the winery for our first crush. Processing the harvest went off without a hitch. It was fun to finally break in all of our shiny stainless wine making tools.

The saying is getting old, but watching the literal fruits of our labour arrive at the crush pad was so awesome! It took four days over the next month to bring in the entire crop. We managed to harvest everything before the fall weather really kicked in. This meant that we got beautifully clean and ripe fruit before the rain and humidity showed up, which can cause all kinds of havoc in the vineyard.

For those of you interested in the types of grapes we have, in order of when we harvested them: Siegerrebe, Gewürztraminer, Foch, Cabernet Foch, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Libre, and Pinot Noir.

It’s amazing the amount of stress that drops off once harvest is complete. The fruit is now in your hands, safe from birds, wasps, racoons, mildew and rot. Now it is up to us to guide them in the right direction to become wine. Over the last couple of weeks that’s what we’ve been up to, helping the grapes achieve their destiny!

Well, I think that’s enough for this post. We need to save something for the next one! #SpoilerAlert wine making, labels, bottles, sign and… you’ll see!

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It’s been three months since our last blog post and only now have we had a spare second to actually sit down and update you on what our summer has looked like. Instead of writing you an essay on the summer of 2014 We . . .

Continued working on the vineyard
- Tucking vines
- Tucking more vines
- Then tucking some more vines
- Thinned the vines
- Removed suckers (laterals) from every vine
- Thinned the leaves on the vines
- Sprayed the vines
- Hedged the vines
- Netted the vines
- Watched the fruit ripen!

Built a winery
- Dug the hole
- Formed and poured the foundation
- Installed the drainage
- Backfilled and compacted
- Poured the slab
- Framed the building
- Sheeted the building
- Put a roof on the building
- Installed doors and windows
- installed the plumbing
- installed the electrical
- Built the bay doors
- To be continued . . .

Found and purchased all of our wine making equipment.
Set up and organized the winery.
Applied for our liquor manufacturing license.
Past the liquor board inspection.
Got our license!

Etc.

Of course we couldn’t have done all of this on our own. A huge thank you to: Joe, Henry, Janine, Phil, Brian, Dave, Mike, Rylan, Richie, Bruce, Martin, Brendan, Vincent, Hannah, Meighan, Sonia, Amanda, Cherie, Kristy, Peter, Andrea, Micah, Rebekah, Jake and Josh for volunteering their time energy and support.

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In the last month we went from finishing tying down the vines and staring at what looked like a farm of sticks. To new shoots already up to two feet long that will carry our 2014 harvest. Speaking of 2014, it seems like right around this time of year, every year, there is always a positive buzz around the industry as to what the vintage will be like. This year is no exception. The combination of two decent previous vintages, our recent cold winter causing proper dormancy in the vines and a pretty dry spring has people talking. There is definitely a positive vibe around the grape growers of Vancouver Island for what 2014 has in store.

With the beginning of the growing season well under way, we’ve been asked on numerous occasions, what we are working on or what are our priorities right now. First and foremost, the number one priority is and will always be the vineyard. Nothing matters more than happy vines and good quality grapes.

To start, we are farming the vineyard organically and striving towards a natural sustainability. This is why we are doing things like chipping the cuttings back into rows, composting and planning on getting vineyard chickens. Mike grew up raising chickens and can’t wait to have a bunch of them controlling weeds and giving back to the soil (pooping) between the rows. Farming this way is definitely labor intensive but, we believe in being good stewards of our land and giving back to it what it gives to us. Currently, there are three major tasks that we are in the middle of.

First is suckering and thinning. Vines tend to shoot out suckers all over their trunks. These suckers need to be removed so that all of the energy goes to the shoots that will provide the fruit. We then need to thin out the fruiting shoots. This is a selective process that ensures that you aren’t trying to push the vines to hard toward quantity because quality is our objective. Thinning also allows good airflow throughout the vine canopy to help prevent nasty things like mildew and rot. Two things that our second task, spraying, help to prevent.

With the advice of a neighbouring vineyard, we’ve devised a fully organic spray program to prevent Powdery Mildew and Botrytis bunch rot. (“fingers crossed”) The third major task that we are currently contending with in the vineyard is ground maintenance. In other words, mowing and weed whacking. We are weed whacking beneath the rows instead of Round-Up and mowing between the rows to keep all of the countless weeds and ground cover at bay.

Here’s what else we’ve been up to. (other than lounging in the vineyard and sipping wine . . . ) As mentioned in a previous post, Mike is ono the board of the Wine Islands Growers Association. He helped organize their annual conference which was a great success. Together we were able to organize and clean out the entire shop so that it is ready for us to get the winery renovations under way. Most of the plans are complete and we have received our building permit. We are excited to see the building come together. We were also able to get our vegetable garden planted. We started all of the seeds in pots in our sun room earlier in the spring. They are now all planted outside in some nice new prepared soil. We weren’t sure if we would have time for a veggie garden this year but we chose to make it happen because we love eating our own produce.

Even though there is a lot on our plate and some days seem endless, it’s so satisfying to know that one day we will be able to sip on the fruits of our labor.

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The first several days of the last month were spent completing our little equipment storage barn. Being two people who love to organize, we were thrilled to move all of our equipment into it. Not only does this get everything under cover and out of the rain, it also clears up the space we need around our shop to begin renovations and the construction of our winery! Drawings and plans are getting close to finished and we are getting very excited to soon be breaking ground.

As you would have read in our previous post, we completed pruning in late February. With pruning complete we are left with a lot of sticks lying between the rows. There are several options available to deal with them. Some vineyards collect and burn them, others simply pick them up and pile them away in a back corner of their property. Another option is to buy an expensive piece of equipment called a flail mower to break them up and leave the pieces between the rows. Mike put a lot of time into coming up with our own solution. What he came up with we call our all-terrain wood chipper. Simply put, we had a local fabrication shop create a trailer to mount a wood chipper on that can be pulled behind our ATV. We have heard of others chipping their cuttings, but hauling a chipper through the rows was super cumbersome. What we love about our solution is; first, it’s not a back and fourth process in order to get rid of the cuttings. Second, it’s super easy to get the chipper anywhere we need behind the ATV. Third, (and this is by far the most significant reason) chipping the green wood creates a beautiful mulch that can be spread below the vines to compost and contribute back the the overall health of the dirt in the vineyard.

Something that spring tends to bring is spring break. Normally we wouldn’t even notice that schools are closed for a couple of weeks, but this spring break brought us an extra pair of hands. Robin’s younger brother Rylan volunteered to work on the vineyard with us for the entire two weeks of his time off of school. His timing was great! Not only is spring very pretty, it brings along the added pressure of making sure that your vines and other plants are ready for the season. The first weekend that Rylan was here, the three of us pruned our orchard. That’s right, not only are there thousands of vines here to tend to, there is an orchard as well. In the orchard there are five different types of apple trees, two pear trees, two hazelnut trees, a fig tree, a mulberry bush, a quince tree and a cherry tree.

With Rylan’s help we ploughed through a bunch of spring tasks together. The majority of our time was spent tying the pruned vines down to the bottom wire of the trellis. We also put a bunch of time into chipping cuttings with the all-terrain chipper. We were also able to till many more rows and add the layer of clover seed and straw. Another large task that we were excited to compete was potting cuttings to create reserve plants for the future. To do this, we had to wander the entire property and collect hundreds of sticks left over from pruning making sure to keep the sticks separate and organized by variety. Then take every stick, variety by variety and process them to the appropriate length, size and bud count. Then take every cutting, properly process the buds and stuff them into pots filled with a good soil/compost mixture that we previously combined and shovelled into every pot. 628 pots later and we have our reserve. Now all we have to do is keep them watered and cross our fingers that the majority of them will grow and survive until this time next year when we will be able to use them where ever they are needed in the vineyard.

Lastly, there is now no question in our minds that spring has arrived because we have already mowed our lawn twice and the garden has started to bloom. This is also keeping the bees happy. (did we mention that we also have bees?)

It is an exciting time around here as everything begins to change colour and grow. The 2014 season is just beginning and we can’t wait to see the rest of the year unfold.

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Prior to the last four weeks, we had already pruned roughly one acre of the vineyard in whatever spare time we had. It is great to now know how much time we will need annually when it comes time to prune. This year came with some challenges. The younger plants were fairly simple to deal with. The older ones were definitely more work. We really had to take our time on them in order to properly re-establish the significant parts of each vine. We are hoping that the time and effort that we put in this year will help make pruning simpler in years to come. With that said, we’re sure that every year will come with its own set of new challenges.

If you are one of those people who is thinking as you read this, “pruning is all you did?” Don’t worry, here is what else we got up to.

We had mentioned in an earlier post that we were hoeing and raking under the rows that were previously mounded up by a large blade behind a tractor. Mike found the most epic little surface tiller that is making this task far more efficient. It is basically a little weed eater motor mounted on wheels, driving small blades. It weighs next to nothing and does a way better job then hoeing by hand. Plus it is small and maneuverable enough that it is easy to avoid damaging the vines. The other thing we are trying below the vines is adding a small amount of white clover seed to the freshly tilled and raked surface. On top of that, we are also placing a significant amount of straw under the rows. The clover is to help with soil nutrition by adding nitrogen back to the soil and act as a bit of a weed controlling cover crop. The straw is there to also help with weed control, as well as hold moisture so that the clover can germinate on the surface.

In whatever spare daylight that Mike had when he was done pruning for the day, he was able to complete the framing of our equipment barn. Robin obviously couldn’t get enough of pruning because she went around and pruned all of the rose bushes on the property. We probably forgot to mention in the past that there are a lot of roses here.

Last but not least, just when you thought we couldn’t fit much more on our plate. Mike joined the board of directors for the Wine Islands Growers Association (WIGA). So far all of the board meetings have been held here in our dining room. If you want to learn more about WIGA, check out the website wiga.ca.

February wasn’t all work and no play. We pruned our last rows on a snowy Saturday morning, just in time to get cleaned up and head to Church & State winery for an awesome evening at an event called BC’s Perfect Pairings. A delicious six course meal prepared by six different top chefs, paired with some of the top wines in BC.

(Deep breath in . . . . . . . . . . . . ) On to the next month!

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After the holidays came to an end, we felt rested, refreshed and ready to take on the new year. The first thing we did this year was finish clearing the last bit of the fence line. It feels so good to have that out of the way. Mike continued to replace broken vineyard posts which now takes far less time and energy because he is just dealing with the inner posts. Of the roughly 80 broken posts, there are now fewer than 15 left to replace. This is by far the best time of year to do it because the soil is still wet and the posts easily slide in and out.

One of the drawings mentioned in our last post was of an equipment and storage barn. It has been really cool watching this drawing come to life as Mike has spent a fair amount of time prepping an area for this structure, putting in footings and as of a day or two ago, completing the framing. It will be so nice to soon have a good dry place to put our farm equipment and supplies. This will also free up the space beside our existing shop to begin construction of the winery.

Speaking of drawings and a winery. Another amazing thing that happened recently was, a good friend of ours who just so happens to be an architect, offered to design and do all of the drawings  of our winery for us. He jumped on the ferry and came over for a weekend. We were able to come up with a pretty cool concept together. Even the initial rough drawings that he sent us are super inspiring and we can’t wait to see them become a reality. This also takes a lot of pressure off of Mike. He was planning out the winery building himself, but now has more time to focus on the vineyard.

Our biggest focus recently has been on pruning the vineyard. If you read our previous post, you’ll understand the importance of this task. We spent a bunch of time together in the office in front of our giant map planning out our pruning strategy , styles, experiments and time frame. Robin is taking a month off of working in the city so that we can do a really thorough job manicuring our vines before spring.

It’s been great to feel the support from other local wine makers and vineyard managers who have stopped by to offer support and share their knowledge. The wine/farming community here in the Cowichan Valley is so friendly and welcoming.

We are really enjoying starting every day together, heading just outside our door to work. We’ve always worked well together and are really enjoying this time working side by side. – A glimpse into our future.

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If you have been following along with us on our journey so far, then you are well aware that the last several months of 2013 have been quite a rush, and represent the beginning of a very significant chapter of our life.

In December we saw the completion of several projects and the start of new ones. Of the numerous broken posts in the vineyard, we have replaced all of the end posts and posts that are structurally integral to the trellising system. This just leaves the inner support posts which are much easier to deal with and far less of a priority. Mike completed the map of the entire vineyard and transferred all of the information from his survey onto large clear map overlays. The map is a fantastic visual tool for making significant crop decisions. Our favourite thing about the map is being able to erase things that we have fixed. A major task that is only a couple of days from completion is the clearing of the fence line. It’ll feel so good to have this done. Not only will it look so much better and will be far simpler to maintain, but the huge benefit of the clear fence line is that it will now allow for better airflow through the vineyard. This helps keep a vineyard healthy in many different ways.

We have begun to prune the vineyard in preparation for the coming spring. Pruning is such an interesting part of grape growing. As tedious of an activity that it may seem, it is one of the most significant annual things that will be done to a vineyard. Every seemingly simple decision made while pruning not only effects the yield and quality of that years crop, but also significantly influences the entire future of each individual vine. It sounds crazy, but pruning is for us, the forming of an intimate relationship with each individual vine on our property. A vineyard is not simply a field of plants, it is thousands of individual vines. Each one unique and equally as important as the next. They say that great wine is made in the vineyard. It all starts with your relationship to the vineyard. We are so excited to be able to one day literally taste the fruits of our labour.

A new pretty regular occurrence at our home has been our bro-in-law Josh. He has been super helpful with many tasks when he is here, pruning included. We feel so blessed by the positive and encouraging relationship that we privileged to have with him. It is so great being able to dive into a venture like this with our friends and family cheering us on.

Over the last few months we have really gotten a good idea of the feel of the property and where we will be situating all of the infrastructure for the winery. Mike loves to draw and now that we have a feel for things, he has begun to put more and more time into designing the buildings that will make this place operational.

The last couple of weeks of December have consisted of tying up loose ends before the end of the year. Mike rebuilt the vineyard sprayer that came with our purchase and made sure it was good and operational for the coming spring. We also purchased a used sprayer from a neighbouring winery for a very reasonable price because it is currently not working. Mike is confident that he can fix it. This new sprayer will potentially cut our spraying time in half.

As the end of the year approached, we experienced a couple of very pretty snowfalls which not only made the vineyard look amazing, they also gave Robin an extra day off work and turned Mike into a giddy little 10 year old. (Mike loves snow) We had a really relaxing Christmas and New Years with great friends and family and feel refreshed and ready for the coming year ahead of us.

It’s going to be so cool to experience a full vintage from start to finish here at home with our own vineyard. Watch out 2014 here we come!

All the best wishes to everyone,

Mike & Robin

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