You may recall that 2022 was too hot and dry and 2023 was too cool and wet – well, 2024 was, up until the last hurrah, a Goldilocks year – reasonably straightforward, long periods of sunshine, cooler evenings, intermittent rains, no hail – all working to provide slow ripening of the grapes whilst maintaining lively acidity due to the cooler overnight temperatures, and all at a pace that allowed for the ideal synchronicity between sugar and phenolic ripeness. The only wrinkle this year was that the rains came in earnest right in the middle of our harvest window (late September to mid October), making picking and processing somewhat of a (damp) challenge. Nonetheless, we are delighted with the quality of the crop and are looking forward to seeing what it brings in bottle.
Now the olives! We appear to have a pretty good crop this year and we will start picking just as this newsletter goes to press. We have 300 trees and we ordinarily get circa 3.0 litres from each tree, which is low in comparison to most producers. This means that we have very little oil to show for our efforts but what we do get is of superb quality.
We will then start the winter program for the vineyards – pruning being the most important. For those of you taking notes, we prune according to the notion of ‘gentle pruning’ (introduced by Poussard in France and made increasingly famous in Italy by Simonit & Stirch) which is all about respecting the integrity of the sap flow in the vine. It makes for healthier, longer-living vines, a more balanced canopy,and, in the result, better quality fruit.
We are also planning to plant two new vineyards in early 2025. We are adding to our Il Pozzo vineyard, making it double the size (Sangiovese/ Ciliegiolo) and we are replanting our La Stalla vineyard (Sangiovese).
Then we are going to have a rest.
