Who should be the Velfrey Vineyard employee of the month??

Ryan Mounsey
Aug 2
5 min read

Nominees will be announced later in this blog!

The 'H' word - Harvest 2025!!!

Panic not folks - we're not there yet!

As some of you may know, Ryan and Sophie are expecting their new little future harvester in September - and Ryan is hoping their little one might time their arrival for after the Solaris is picked but before the main Seyval and Pinot harvest! Wonder what odds you would get on that!?

This year's crop looks like it is going to be a good size and very clean so once again we will need to ask for your help to get it all in.

We can never adequately express our gratitude to everyone who does come and join the harvest team, and we feel that, as well as organising a 'thank you' party for a later date, we should reward our harvesters with a bottle or two of wine on the day as a small token of our appreciation.

The main harvest will probably be sometime from mid to late October and if you think you would be able to come along to help for either half or a full day please drop us an email on info@velfrey.com and we will keep you up to date - no obligation at this stage!

Vote for the Velfrey Vineyard Employee of the month!

The nominees are:

A - Glen the new robot lawn mower. Hard working, devoted to duty, never complains, works long hours - will even work in the dark with his little headlights on. He trundles off down to the bottom of the vineyard, all by himself - he doesn't seem to get lonely, I rather like to think of him just quietly humming to himself as he goes about his jobs.

or...

B - Bash 'the swamp monster'. Bash is determined to find all the smelly tennis balls around the vineyard but mainly from the pond where he put them in the first place - and he's very good at it! You know when he's found one as you smell it before you see it! The one in the picture actually had worms on it!

or..

C. Archie and Billy who have decided that if they bark wildly whenever someone even approaches the drive we won't need a door bell

Please send your votes in to info@velfrey.com

Update on the season so far

What a difference from last year! Although, we are still saying 'so far so good'!

Flowering was safely negotiated, fruit set came next and now we are at bunch formation - and I say again 'so far so good'!

The vines have loved the weather this year and the balance of sunshine and a little bit of rain has been pretty much ideal.

Since the last blog was published, we have been spending time on the canopy management, which started with tucking in the new shoots so that they are held neatly within the trellising wires. With our double guyot system where we lay two canes down (one heading North and the other South) on the fruiting wire, ideally we want the emerging shoots to head straight up through the wires and parallel to their neighbouring shoots.

As well as seeing lots of insects (for example ladybirds, bees, dragonflies etc) and spiders in the vineyard, we also very often find bird nests within the vine canopy, but this year was the first that we found a goldfinch nest in the Pinot Noir - absolutely beautiful! They were very dedicated parents, with one sitting patiently on the eggs and the other playing the local food delivery service, flitting in and out. We know there were at least four eggs and last night, whilst we were enjoying a cuppa in the garden, we were greeted by a 'charm' of these delightful birds - and would like to think they were our little Pinot goldfinch family.

After tucking in, it's straight on to leaf stripping where we remove the leaves from around the mini-grapes to allow the wonderful sunshine in and the air to circulate - all of which helps to keep them healthy, clean and to aid ripening and flavour development.

The Solaris vines are very vigorous and basically love to grow! So keeping them neat is no mean feat! As this is the first variety to ripen, we leaf stripped them first and are now working hard to the keep the canopy under control - think lockdown hairstyle!

The Pinot Noir vines are more bushy than the Seyval Blanc but not quite as wayward as the Solaris; being a variety which can be more prone to disease challenge, it also needs a bit more tlc. So major leaf stripping and spraying with all the health giving tisanes we make here. And so far, things are looking good.

The Seyval Blanc vines are generally more restrained and tidy - although if left the shoots would elongate and spread a long old way!

In all three varieties, the fruit is looking lovely and clean and we'll do everything we can to keep it that way.

Thank goodness we don't have to think about magazine deadlines any more! How did we ever do both?

The three year old Solaris vines on the slope in front of the visitor lodge are very happy indeed. The vines have been trained much lower to the ground, which is dark and shaley and absorbs heat which is radiated back up into the ripening grapes. We didn't realise, however, just how ripe they were getting until we noticed some very keen blackbird attention! So bird netting out and the we've wrapped these vines up to protect them. Needless to say we have some very grumpy blackbirds regularly tap dancing on top of the netting!

Solaris 2024 coming soon!

For all you Solaris fans, our 2024 vintage will be with us soon! Keep a look out for the launch date!

Decanter Medals

We were absolutely thrilled that our Velfrey NV and Velfrey Cuvée Reserve 2020 both won bronze medals at Decanter!

The Decanter awards competition is the largest, global wine competition and renowned for its rigorous judging, so to medal is a huge achievement and we are over the moon!

Bits and bobs

We attended the Countryside Alliance Champions Reception at the House of Lords - wonderful experience but blimey it was hot!

We had a visit from one of the founders of the Faber restaurant plus a filming team. Faber is a restaurant based in Hammersmith which celebrates the best of produce from British coastal areas. They were on a road trip to film in beautiful locations and highlight producers in Pembrokeshire and they spent a morning with us.