For the rain, it raineth every day (WS). I know because I recorded it with despair.

April can be the cruellest month of the year in the vigneron’s calendar: all that preparation of winter pruning and vine laying can be all for nought.

Dora, our gang leader, ties down vines onto the fruiting wire and uses 3 ties to keep the cane in close contact with the heated wire…

Under leaden skies, Ed Micham, our viticulturist, shows Robert how he goes about gentle pruning…

We have been dodging the rain and snow this month whilst trying to keep body and soul warm.

Robert inspects our barrels full of juice, as fermentation begins.

Our red wine base for the rosé sits in a carboy bottle

Helping out with grape picking at Alder Ridge.

We inch our way towards versaison when the grapes change their appearance and soften: the chardonnay become translucent and the pinot begin to turn black.

Finally, we see the green bunches beginning to swell.

Nature has taken no notice of the fact that homo sapiens’s world has come to a grinding halt.

23 April. This shows the bud just after bud burst. At this stage it is at its most vulnerable to frost damage.

We go on tour.  Exhibiting our fizz at the Great British Food Fair at Englefield House, Bradfield. 

Winding Wood are joining other vineyards in The Thames & Chilterns Region to toast the bountiful 2018 harvest, by holding an English Wine & Food Festival at Brightwell Vineyard, Wallingford…

Friends and family answer the call for a weekend of harvesting. Armed with grape snippers they work their way down each row selecting the ripest bunches whilst leaving others for the second pick in a week’s time.

A pre-harvest wine tasting holiday in Rioja. And we hold the Thames and Chiltern Vineyard Association Wine Awards in the barn at Orpenham Farm.