White Elderberry

We have just bottled a limited edition white elderberry wine which was made last year. It is a lovely dry wine with crisp elderberry flavour. Without the strong red colour it has matured quickly and is almost indistinguishable from a white grape wine. As we are only able to produce a small amount of this wine, it will only be available from the winery.

July 2012 Rain and more rain

So much rain and for what good?  Well, rhubarb loved it! We picked continuously over the month and have started off this year's wine production.  We are grateful to Tirril Brewery in Long Marton for a couple of raids on their front garden rhubarb to supplement our own. Elderflower is normally the first into the tanks but the lack of sun put this behind a week or so.  Finally the sun put in a brief appearance and Angela was out picking the aromatic flowers.  They are now in the tanks fermenting.  The lack of sun delayed the raspberries but after the first picking on 19^th July  we are now picking madly.  Meanwhile we have  adjusted and bottled last year’s Elderflower and Apple wine, Rhubarb wine and Raspberry wine.  The 2011 Raspberry wine has a much deeper colour than that of 2010 – we wonder why?!

We had visits from the Penrith Soroptimists, Melmerby WI, Warcop WI, and Langwathby and Edenhall WI.

At the end of June our art exhibition, Art at the Winery 2012, opened with some stunning works of art by Haydn Morris, Debra Esterhuizen, Maureen Bennett and Roy Fleming.  The opening evening attracted more than 70 people and the place was buzzing.  The free wine helped to loosen tongues and possibly wallets as several paintings and felt artworks had been sold by the end of the evening.

The preview evening in full swing!

Blencathra in snow by Haydn Morris

Evening owl by Debra Esterhuizen

Our non-wine activity was slates!  We bought 12 tons of reclaimed Westmorland Green slates supposedly from a school in Prudhoe for the barn.  These came unsorted and dirty from years of grime and lichen so we spent many days size sorting and pressure washing them, often in the rain.

'Attractive blond lady' (see June posting) in another guise!

More June 2012

The group tasting season has begun and one of the first to arrive was the West Cumbrian Veteran Vehicle Club. Thirty-three members arrived in a vintage coach hired from Cumbria Classic Coaches of Kirkby Stephen. A merry time was had by all and a brass plaque was awarded to the winery.

Veteran Vehicle Association members arrive for tasting.

A well used footpath runs adjacent to the winery and many walkers like to stop off for a tasting. One recent visitor stopping off from his walk was Billy Norman who reviews wines for his Facebook wine site Billy-Nose-About-Wine. He seemed to like most wines, but chose to review the rhubarb wine. You can find his review at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Billy-Nose-About-Wine/330683643657434

Billy Nose About Wine

Here is a short quote from his review, which Angela found very amusing for reasons you will see:

'The sign outside says ‘Free Wine Tasting’ and also boasts a geological display. Benjamin and I can’t resist and go straight into the High Cup Wine’s Winery. We enter the converted barn to be greeted by a very pleasant, attractive blond lady who’s hospitality was second to none. Her name is Angela and she is married to wine maker Ron Barker. We remove our waterproof garments and settle down for a fantastic wine tasting session. Angela offers us a wide range of fruit wines to sample, all of which are seasonal and mostly using locally sourced fruit. We try Gooseberry, Elderflower and Apple, Rhubarb, Raspberry, Elderflower, Damson, Blackcurrant and Spiced Beetroot. 

I must say all of these wines tasted fantastic and so choosing one to take away was difficult. All of the wines were very well balanced and quite delicious.' 

June 2012

Our last post seems a long while ago and the reason for this is that we have been away visiting our three daughters who produced three new grandchildren in less than three months. Our total now is seven which takes some getting used to, but now we have to turn our attention to the winery.

Our wines have been selling well and the beetroot wine made last autumn all sold very quickly and we have none left at the winery. We are also very low in stocks of our 2010 wines and a couple of months ago we started bottling our new season (2011) wines. The 2011 Rhubarb, Gooseberry and Elderflower & Apple wines are now available from the winery, our on-line shop, and from our retail outlets in Cumbria.

We have also bottled some wines made with grapes grown in Cumbria and Northumbria. Although these have been made only for private consumption, you can find out more at www.northumbrianwine.com.

We have started preparing for the production of our 2012 wines by harvesting the first two batches of rhubarb. This has been frozen to await further pickings. Luckily the plentiful rain has kept the rhubarb growing and we must pick more very soon! 

Although there hasn’t been much activity in the winery during the Spring, this doesn’t mean we are sitting here contemplating our navels! We have just picked up where we left off last year on our next big project, which is the conversion of a large adjacent barn into self-catering properties. This is a fabulous walking area (the main attraction being High Cup Nick) and the barn conversion should provide space for visitors to the area who might like the added attraction of staying at a winery. Recently we started re-roofing, which firstly involved installing new oak trusses. These pictures show something of what was involved.

Firstly the scaffolding goes up.

The first oak truss is lifted into position.

The first ridge purlin is bolted into position.

All three oak trusses and purlins in position.

The rafters (spars) are added. 

Spiced Beetroot Wine

Our famous Spiced beetroot wine is now on sale. We've delivered to most of our outlets and done a tasting for Low Sizergh Barn in South Cumbria. We attended November's Orton Farmers Market where we sold lots of wine. Weather permitting, we shall also be at December's market and Rheged's Food and Craft Fair on December 4th.

Apple harvest

We picked masses of apples from our usual two sources.  One of them is Hilary Wilson's orchard where she grows an amazing variety of apples. We call her the "Apple Lady" because what she doesn't know about apples isn't worth knowing.  The following day we milled and pressed  all the apples, gaining 220 litres of juice. That is now fermenting well.

Hilary's orchard

Second picking - note use of Sainsburys boxes!

Unfortunately Apple Day at Acorn Bank was cancelled because the fields were water-logged.  We had such a good day last year!

Alison filming close-up of pressing

About two weeks after processing the apples, Alison Freeman from BBC's Look North came to film and interview us about apple wine.  We had to get some apples from a third source so we could be filmed.  In contrast to the crew of 6  for Countryfile, Alison was a one woman band! As yet it hasn't been shown.

September news

We expect you've all been on tenterhooks, wondering who won the case of wine for the most popular picture.  We can now reveal that it was Eddie Potts's picture of Nichol Chair.  Congratulations, Eddie!

Eddie Potts with winning picture (photo from The Herald). 

The Countryfile programme was shown on September 4th. We were only  on for about 2 minutes and they didn't say who we were but we had a number of enquiries as a result. Even though the programme showed us only starting to make this year's wine and Matt giving Clare Balding "their last bottle" of last year's wine it didn't stop people ordering beetroot wine!  We are going to have it ready by the beginning of November. It's certainly a fantastic colour!

Pressing beetroot.

We've had a busy month dealing with damsons and elderberries. Most of the damsons came from Colby but a few came from the walled garden at Highhead Castle, a fascinating ruin, owned by Christopher Terry. There has been such a bumper crop of damsons this year that we've had to turn people away. We crushed the damsons and they are now fermenting happily.

Crushing damsons.

Elderberries are our least favourite fruit to harvest.  So many bushes have a mixture of completely ripe fruit, completely unripe fruit and all states in between! This year we even found flowers with the berries! We have bushes in our field but we also have to go out on the lanes. Then we have to strip the berries off the stems with a fork. This is very labour intensive and monotonous, leaving us with purple hands, but we get a lot of TV watched!

Dense bunches of ripe elderberries.

Flowers and berries on the same bush!

As part of the Eden Artists Open Studios we visited Haydn Morris in Tirril.  As a result we have agreed to make him some wine from his prolific harvest of grapes grown in a poly tunnel. They are now fermenting. Our Rondo grapes on the fellside are not in such good condition!

Presssing Haydn's crushed grapes. 

Our Rondo grapes - waiting for the compost heap!