Year in the vines – the end

A year has now passed since my first vineyard dispatch on 14 Aug 2008 [three weeks before our dramatic site redesign even – JR]. I have bud-rubbed, trained, trellised, machete-d, harvested, tied down, tucked in and pruned my way through 12 months at Gusbourne Estate in Kent. I have frozen, burnt and drowned in those fields, all the while watching the cycle of growth, from budburst to flowering to veraison to leaf-fall (albeit not in that order). I have cursed, sweated, soiled, stubbed and tripped my way up and down those bloody rows, and loved every last throbbing minute of...