The Eurolink Blog rises again

After a brief break, the Eurolink Blog returns with a more general outlook on what Eurolink does and what is happening within the farming industry. This way, I hope to add more posts and I am sure that you will want to comment on these postings, all you have to do is add a comment at the box below. Please let me know if you are unable to do this.

I am hoping that our members of Eurolink are not as desperate for water as the counties in England that have been put under a hose pipe ban - but the National Farmer's Union (NFU) has a useful page with current new and it can be found here. It is concerning to note that on the 23rd of March England had only 32% of the long term average rainfall for March. Have any readers of this blog and Eurolink members got any advice on farm management through droughts? Please add them in to the comment box below.

I hope to have good news or at least news of a better nature in the next posting.

The Eurolink Agricolae Club, is part of International Farmlink and the South of England Agricultural Society, and it was formed fifteen years ago to enable those who had taken part in Eurolink exchanges to maintain friendships and continue to learn through the exchange of ideas amongst people with similar business or personal interests.

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.

South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Four

Foam collars and Nucleation Collars

I was not alone being tired within the SEVA group as we started the early evening lecture session back at the hotel. Richard Marchal of Reims University presented on foam (the bubbles at the top of the glass, not the effervescence which comes up through it). We learned that the premier taille gives better bubbles than the cuvee, and that botrytis is the enemy of a well bubbling Champagne. And we were also told that filtering a sparkling wine reduces the fizz. The theory came on a little strong for the time-slot given, but things perked up as we watched Champagne being poured into different glasses (heights) and into glasses with 80 micro-dots laser-etched inside the bottom. Taller glasses lead to larger surface bubbles since the bubbles gain in size as they ascend through the liquid (gaining CO2). And those micro-dots sure did make the fizz fizz, though it only lasted 5 minutes or so.

The high-point came as the session ended with a tasting culminating with a 1983, zero dosage wine which had only been hand-disgorged hours before. Wonderful! So rich and complex. I’d have never guessed it was zero-dosage, so soft was the acid (though not flabby). Beautiful. One in the eye for my theories that sparkling wines need cork ageing, but then this wine was nearly 30 years old.

More 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.

South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Three

Continuing the further exploits of the South East Vineyards Association Trip and one member of SEVA whose trip was part sponsored by the International Farmlink, we learn a bit about champagne corks.

This morning's first visit on the SEVA Champagne trip was to Oller, a manufacturer of Champagne corks in Reims. I say manufacturer, but they actually accept the prefabricated pieces (discs and crumbles) from their factory in Spain (where the cork forests are) and stick them together in Reims. This sounds easy, but actually it is a detailed process with many, many steps and quality measures and checks in place. Two discs form the bottom of the cork and the composite layer above is used since it is cheaper. Quite an interesting trip, and refreshing there was no accompanying glass of Champagne!

For the readers of this blog who are from France or have a smattering of French, I think there is an interesting video of some corks and an idea of investment in Reims on YouTube.

The afternoon's visit saw us at Nicolas Feuillatte (the website has links to English, French, German, Italian and Japanese sites), the huge cooperative. The visit was characterised by the wow-factor. Ohhh, what huge tanks you have. Ahhh, what huge and efficient machines you have. Yiiikes, how many bottles per year was that?

In fact Moet's production is twice as big, though Feuillate is the biggest seller in France, showing just how much Moet is marketed for export.

I'm not sure how much I really got from the trip. It was interesting that they don't use pectolytic enzymes to speed settling ("no time to add them", the man said, or somesuch as we whizzed around with our necks craning up at the huge tanks or down over the balcony to watch robots wrangling pallets full of bottles into shape).

Then there was the tasting. I'll be frank it left me a little cold. Perhaps the wines were a little sweeter than my normal taste. Some others in the group left the shop with Champagne in fancy packaging, but I did not.

More 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.

South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Two

Continuing the journey of one of the successful applicants of the International Farmlink travel bursary, more information can be found here, we pick up the thread on our intrepid reporter.

Still on the SEVA trip to Champagne...Back at the hotel this evening we were treated to a Champagne tasting hosted by Steve Charters MW who works as an academic in Reims, which is pretty cool given that he is English. As well as being an MW, he is an expert in marketing and consumer behaviour.

The tasting contained some good Champagnes and some interesting ones. We opened with a zero dosage, 100% Pinot Meunier, which was characteristic and quite fruity, and very good but not my favourite. Better, to me, was the Paque et Fils, which was slightly oaked: the oak being very well integrated to give a fine round body but with great complexity of taste and a long finish.

We had a good conversation about the merits of lees ageing versus bottle (cork) ageing. A common view is that it's the lees ageing, which matters for Champagne, with this giving it the rich toasty autolytic flavours and rich integration. Consistently, though, for the past few days we are shown wines with significant periods of cork ageing and it's certainly made me wonder whether a good length of time both pre and post disgorging is important for a fine sparkling wine.

We challenged Steve for his views on English sparkling wine. He put forward some passionate views convincingly, urging English growers to pull together with one voice and to rally round a quality charter. The room was in broad agreement with his comments, only broken when we pushed him as what name English sparkling wine might succeed with. Steve pulled the straightest face he could before announcing that he'd be asking for royalties when we were all using his inspired idea. "Spurgle," he announced. There was universal loud laughter, including Steve himself. The point, of course, is that it's a tricky subject.

More 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.