As suspected, the weather this last month has been variable and pretty typical of an English summer. Whilst it hasn’t been overly cold (temperatures have been anywhere between 16-23°C) it has been generally overcast and cloudy, and fairly muggy.
Heavy bouts of rain have punctuated throughout, with at least 2 short hailstorms here in Newbury, so the grapes have been well watered. Only one final trim of the vine length has been needed which hopefully means that all their energy is going towards swelling the grapes.
The Chardonnay and Ortega continue to track pretty evenly with a pleasing number of good sized bunches each.
Conversely my MVN3, which is the more established of my varieties, is having a lean year this year (perhaps due to less keen attention on my part in taming its vigour).
Usually if we see such wash-out weather in August we get a late summer renaissance in September. Initial forecasts look like this may be the case but, with a Bank Holiday weekend coming up, we can never be too sure!
