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An English vineyard diary: March 2021
In 2009 Christian Seely, CEO of Axa Millesimes, and his friend Nicholas Coates planted a vineyard around Nicholas’ home on the chalk downlands of Hampshire. Over the ensuing decade, they believe they’ve experienced everything a vineyard can throw at them. But, as this second instalment from an English vineyard diary shows, nothing can prepare them for Covid 19…
The first lockdown of the British nation in its 1,000 year history began exactly a year ago today.
We felt the full impact the following morning.
It was 7.30am and a cold northerly breeze was whipping across the vineyard.
I was the first to arrive.
Ahead of me 35,000 vines were shivering in the wind, like expectant children, waiting to be pruned. There was no sign of the Romanian pruning team.
Ten minutes later, my phone rang.
“I’m sorry, Nick”, a timorous voice explained, “but they’ve gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone.”
The silence is palpable.
“Where the hell to?”
“To Bucharest. It’s home.”
It takes a while for the implications to sink in.
The vines need pruning. Without pruning, there will be no fruit.
Already our existing wine sales, made largely to the hospitality and events sectors, are plummeting, and with the nation in lockdown they will rapidly fall to zero. No sales, and now, no wine.
Bugger…
Give us botrytis, mildews, drought, floods, wild boars, even Jean Claude Juncker, but please, not this…
Rapid calls to the Home Team.
By 9am Georgie (Office Manager), Virginia (Wife, Head of Events) and Tristram (Son, Head of Sales) have joined Paulo (Vineyard Manager) Andras (Technical Director) and I on the vineyards. We work furiously all day, but by 4pm are in despair.
It’s a ‘Dad’s Army’ moment.
There is no way we can hope to finish on time, and the buds will be bursting in just a week.
At 4.30pm we put out a Facebook request.
By 10pm we have 40 willing pruners from among the young, stranded at home unexpectedly, furloughed by school and university. Of the 40, ten have their own transport and can start at 8.30am the following day. They are selected.
The following morning the new recruits all arrive on time. They form a loose group, standing two metres apart, each armed with a pack-lunch and with broad smiles on their faces.
“Hands up anyone with an A level or degree in biology.”
A single hand goes up.
“Ok. You’re hired. Any engineers?”
Two more hands raised.
“Mathematicians?”
Another two.
Perfect.
They can be the pruners, the vanguard, or élite, to be inducted within twenty minutes into the arcane science of spur-pruning.
“The rest of you Liberal Arty-Farters can follow me (English Literature) and Tristram (Theology). We will follow behind (as ever), pull out the dead wood and tie down the canes. ”
Like vineyard, like life.
Each worker is given four rows, of equal length. Ten metres apart. Too far from one another to talk or to convey infectious diseases, but relative progress visible to all.
“Ready, steady, Go!”
The competitive juices, like rising sap, flow furiously and work-rates are phenomenal. Social distancing, we discover, is a gang-master’s nirvana.
Eight days later and we’ve finished. The team is still smiling broadly. The sun is shining and the wind has turned almost southerly. We are in shirt sleeves. The vines are pruned and tied down, like obedient children, ready to burst into life.
Whoever had the effrontery to call the young ‘Snow-flakes’?
They worked hard and they worked fast, always on time, with never a moan, despite the aching backs and bruised hands (pruning is a hard discipline), and always with smiles.
This year, with the prospect of a solution to this insidious virus now firmly in sight, the Romanians are back. They are good workers and we’re pleased to have them.
But in the meantime we have invested in technology that will now do the pulling out of the dead wood by machine.
The pandemic has had the effect of accelerating every existing trend.
The puller-outers (or liberal arty-farters) have been displaced…
The scientists and engineers survive.
Like vineyard, like life.
To be continued…
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