Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year

On this posting, I just want to wish our contributors and readers a Happy Christmas and a Prsoperous New Year and would love to hear from you all about your farming problems and solutions next year. Thank you for your support this year.

with kind and prosperous regards

The Eurolink Blog Team

South East Vineyards Association Trip - Part Six

In our last post, late by a day, we revisit the SEVA trip ending in Reims and then the journey home.

Reims

The last afternoon of the SEVA trip to Champagne was more relaxed with no hosted visits. Instead we had a huge lunch followed by a waddle around the lovely small city of Reims (the cathedral is beautiful and highly recommended) followed by huge dinner.

There may have been some wine and beer in there too. The dinner was at Boulingrin, a fish restaurant, which I would highly recommend. The staff were surly as hell, but perhaps that was part of the charm? Good food and lovely inside, and although they had stuck Les Anglais out of the way at the back, we still had a great time.

After that was the highpoint of the day: (I can't believe I'm saying this) the 11pm son et lumiere at the front of Reims Cathedral. Yes, it sounds naff, but in actual fact it was stunning. Specially conceived to celebrate 800 years, the show has to be seen to be believed (see the link above). The creators managed to "dress" each of the figures in colourful clothes, bathe the facade in any number of graphic styles and project construction workers at key points. All in a 20 plus minute show, which was both mesmerising and beautiful. I lay on the cobbles with the large crowd and lapped it up, not noticing the hardness of the stones. Then off to the bus for a late return to the hotel in Epernay

Back to Blighty

It was a long trip today in the coach back north through northern France, then the tunnel. The weather was beautiful, hence terrible in a coach but I'm back in on e piece having had a splendid trip. I'm unsure what was better: getting to know people in the English wine industry or having a brief insider's view of Champagne. Or maybe the best bit was that just-disgorged 1983...?

Great trip. Many thanks to the Foss and to Lila for organising it all (and for all that hard work translating for us more linguistically challenged).


Also thanks to Kenzie Graham, who documented this journey, his blog can be found here and he has a separate blog on bee keeping, this can be found here.

Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.

South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Five

Malakoff and Mazy

The final day of the SEVA trip to Champagne opened with a trip to Malakoff vineyard where we saw a lot of impressive machines used to tend their 150 hectares. More interesting was hearing about how new regulations are ensuring producers act more responsibly with respect to resource usage and waste, especially waste water. We were shown a very wide plastic/rubber mat laid outside the winery (I thought more like a very, very large and shallow kids paddling pool I remember from my childhood) where all chemical preparations and machine washing-downs must take place. Tractors can drive on to be washed down. Many producers have created special concrete areas for this purpose. Waste water is pumped from there into special bags with porous tops which allow the water to evaporate over time leaving dried pesticides or other undesirable compounds to be taken away. The drying process takes 2 weeks to a few months depending on the weather and the time of year.


With Franck Mazy, who was hosting, we then left the winery yard to visit two local vineyard sites. He showed us an array of pests and nutrient deficiency, helping us to recognise symptoms. It’s fair to say it was very hard. Franck seemed a very credible bloke. He’s a consultant in the area (and in fact is currently doing some work with Nyetimber too) and he came across very well. He’s clearly a careful and thoughtful vineyard expert and seemed to have great depth and breadth to his knowledge. He was
clearly touting for business, but good luck to him.

Franck told us that the vines in Champagne are 3 weeks ahead of where they normally would be at this time of year, and that he had never before seen flowering in May. So these vines are 3-4 weeks ahead of this year in England. They are talking about an unprecedented 25th August harvest in Champagne.

But then don’t these things so often seem to even up towards the more normal dates nearer the time...?

The last installment next week.
Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.