Andrew Hedley update on Framingham 2009 harvest

Vintage is slow to start here; we have just hand picked this morning 3 tonnes of Select Riesling which has a higher must weight than the last two but with great natural acidity. The rieslings will be a little bolder this year with maybe 0.5 to 1% more alcohol than the last two vintages - rather like the 2004 wines in fact. Flavours and concentration are really good at present and acid is high which gives us room to manoeuvre with regard to residual sugar. I expect to have finished the riesling pick by the middle of next week except for late botrytis, which is paradoxically really early for us in what is a relatively late season.

It has been topsy turvy, I already have two botrytis musts on board and only the one table wine above! Wet february meant that those who did the right thing in their vineyards had softening grapes which were susceptible to botrytis. We have allowed what was there to dry out and instead of dropping on the ground we harvested it. Riesling at 28bx (another auslese? maybe in a 750ml bottle? Can I resist doing it? probably not) and gewurz at 33bx. The latter GW pick was designed as much to keep the sugar from blowing out in the main gewurz pick but the juice looks interesting.... All our Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir is really clean and the vines show really good balance between canopy and crop, and we’re having an extended spell of sunny weather now with under control daytime highs - we start PN tomorrow and will finish picking it on Monday. A lot of people have picked Pinot Gris already, which is really early; however the canopy is starting to shut down on our estate Pinot Gris which means the grapes should just cruise nicely and slowly to where we want them giving that extra valuable hang time. So fingers crossed all looks OK.