Hey Blog! On Tuesday I took a day off normal studies and instead went to help with the harvest at our local vineyard!
The Amber Valley Vinyard is a very nice place – we hadn’t even heard of it till a couple of years ago, which is surprising for someone whose family drinks a fair bit (that is, my parents, combined – I have a taster now and again!); but it is more than a vineyard. It has a large collection of local apple tree varieties, from which they make cider; a large field of grapes, from which they make wine, and markets a few times a year. We have been there twice before: once for a market last year and once for the wassailing January this. I wrote about the wassailing on Home Ed in a Shed, for more look for “Here we come a-wassailing”, Jan 23.
Recently, we found out that there was going to be a day when they were inviting volunteers to come and pick grapes. Mum voluntold us we were going, so we did! Dad even got the day off to come, as this was too good an experience to miss! It’s rather enjoyable – the only downside is the wasps. Apparently, the vineyard lost ⅕ – ¼ of the crop this year to wasps; these grapes go brown, shrivelled, and have a hole in the side. I counted a maximum of 17 wasps on one bunch of grapes, at one point, and although most of the bunches on one side of the field were only mildly affected, the other side had barely any whole undamaged grapes left! Unfortunately I have an online science class which isn’t recorded on Tuesday afternoons, so I had to skip part of the grape-picking to come home for an hour. Still, the day was very fun, and in the end the group managed to pick about a ton of grapes, which will make a lot of wine! I don’t think we’ll get quite as much from our own vines, which my big brother gave Dad a few years ago, but we got some useful tips on pruning them! We also bought a bottle of a previous batch, so we can test out what it will likely taste like. I hope to continue to visit – I know it’s still 4½ years till I can have a taster there, but it’s enjoyable to participate in this kind of thing. And who knows, maybe we’ll get to the next lot of grape picking in a couple of weeks’ time!
