June and July

Introduction
We started this blog at the beginning of August, but because we have had an eventful June and July we thought we would start by reviewing the previous two months. 

Early June
We have been busy preparing for this year's art exhibition which is on the theme of the geology and scenery of High Cup Nick. High Cup Nick is a spectacular cut into the Pennines a short distance from the winery and attracts a lot of walkers throughout the year. It has inspired many artists over the years, including Turner. The art exhibition will run concurrently with a new geology display for which panels are being designed by Dr Elizabeth Pickett of the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnership. We have already seen the drafts of the geology panels and they are impressive. We are making the display tables and collating the rock and mineral samples. More than twenty artists have expressed interest and we are in danger of being overwhelmed with pictures; we hope that not every artist arrives with large format pictures.

High Cup Nick

View from the Nick towards the west

15th June
Belinda Artinstoll from BBC Radio Cumbria came to record a feature. We wandered around the vineyard and winery discussing the problems of growing fruit and the techniques of making wine. The result will be a 10 minute slot to be broadcast on 26th June.

Spent the rest of the day organising the art - so much time is spent adjusting spacing and height of pictures. But it seems to have come together well and visitors will be able to see art using many different media.

17th June - 5.00 pm
The exhibitions were opened by local MP, Rory Stewart.  There was a good turnout of people including many artists. After brief welcomes and introductions by myself and Chris Woodley-Stewart, Director of the North Pennines AONB Partnership, Rory opened the exhibitions with an impressive recitation of W.H.Auden's New Year Letter, which sent everyone, including us, to Google Auden!

W H Auden, a central figure of English poetry, wrote about Dufton, Dufton Pike, Dufton Fell, High Cup Nick and Cauldron Snout in his poems and letters. He referred to Dufton as  ”......the loveliest village in all England”. But it was the fells above Dufton that had such a spectacular impact on his writing. He describes those fells as one of the most sacred places of this earth. In his poem New Year Letter, written in New York whilst in exile during the war, Auden expresses his thoughts about the north Pennines, which highlights his fascination and obsession with the landscape around Dufton:

Whenever I begin to think...

 An English area comes to mind
 I see the nature of my kind 
 As a locality I love
 Those limestone moors that stretch from Brough
 To Hexham and the Roman Wall
 This is the symbol of us all
 There where the Eden leisures through
 Its sandstone valley, is my view
 Of green and civil life that dwells
 Below a cliff of savage fells
 From which original address
 Man faulted into consciousness
 Along the line of lapse the fire
 Of life's impersonal desire
 Burst through his sedentary rock
 And, as at Dufton and at Knock
 Thrust up between his mind and heart
 Enormous cones of myth and art
 Always my boy of wish returns
 To those peat-stained deserted burns
 That feed the Wear and Tyne and Tees
 And, turning states to strata see
 How basalt long oppressed broke out
 In wild revolt at Cauldron Snout

Rory reciting Auden

A good turnout for the preview evening

18th June - Saturday
The Cumberland and Westmorland Herald published a good piece about the exhibitions and this has resulted in a lot of visitors today. 

20th - 27th June
We finished laying the concrete floor to the wine store a week ago and so can now bottle the 2010 wines for storage there. We started on the rhubarb wine, which is urgently needed for the shop, and then followed with elderflower and apple, damson, elderberry, gooseberry and raspberry. We had to adjust the sugar content of the wines in order to reach a good balance and then spent a merry time tasting and checking the results. Only sales will show whether we have got it right. 

27th June
Today we started the next batch of elderflower wine. Because of the very dry and warm spring the elderflowers are early this year so while we were bottling we sent our friends out to pick the flowers. They are now fermenting in one of the tanks (the flowers, not our friends!).

28th June
We took a trip to Arnside to re-supply Arnside House, on the promenade, with wine. On the way back we called in at Low Sizergh Barn to give the buyer a tasting. As a result she immediately ordered a case of each variety. We now have two outlets in South Cumbria. So - a successful day. 

29th June
We dispatched two bottles of elderberry wine to a customer in London. She drinks elderberry wine for health reasons and she tells us that when she finished the first two bottles (from an earlier order) her cramps started to return! However, I don't think we can make this health-giving claim for the wine.

30th June 
Stan Abbott and friends came to collect some wine we have made for some small producers of grapes from the Durham area. The wine started as a mix of white and red grapes and produced a light rosé wine. The group did a blind tasting with some French and South African rosé wines and it proved surprisingly difficult to tell which was the Northumbrian wine. Stan took a bottle into the studio at BBC Radio Newcastle where a wine expert actually thought quite highly of the wine! 

Stan has set up a website for this wine, which incidentally is not for sale. See more at www.northumbrianwine.com

Later in the day David Murray visited the winery. He has included the visit in his blog Around England.

3rd July - Sunday
A very hot day. We were very busy for the first two hours - then no-one after 1.00 pm. Seems that everyone was watching the Wimbledon final!

12th July
We collected our new fridge magnets from the Fusion Café  at Brougham Hall. They were made by a friend of the proprietors, Ann and Ian. If you don't know this café you should make a visit as we think Ann and Ian produce the best coffee and scones in the area. We always feel sad when we have finished eating and it is time to move on. Anyway, the fridge magnets look good - perhaps we should organise a fridge magnet trail around the Eden Valley. 

17th July
We are now picking raspberries every three days. We have to do this or else the blackbirds will do the work for us! We have already picked 45 kg (almost a 100 lbs, for the metrically challenged). We are also continuing to harvest rhubarb which has recovered in the recent rain.

21st July
Gamblesby W.I. came for an evening talk and tasting. This is one of several groups who have visited over the last two months. A lively group with lots of questions.

A ladies group visiting during the exhibitions

25th July
The hot weather has prompted residents and visitors to Dufton to walk to the winery and sit outside drinking bottles of our wine and then walking or staggering back.  

31st July
During the first six weeks there has been a lot of interest in the geology exhibition and we have had to re-stock with AONB leaflets which visitors are very eager to take. The art exhibition has also been well received and we have sold a substantial amount of the work. 

View of geology display and part of the art exhibition

View of art exhibition in the other part of the tasting area

In the fermentation room we now have batches of rhubarb, gooseberry, raspberry and elderflower wines fermenting. It is a challenge organising the operations so that there are always some empty tanks available for the bottling and filtering stages as we still have several batches of the previous year's wines to bottle.