This year at London Cru we are continuing our love of making English wines. As a small urban winery in London we don’t grow our own grapes, but rather we work with great growers close to London.
Now August has arrived, in the vines we can see that the flowering and fruit set has finished. We had great weather around flowering and it has given us nice full clusters. These little hard green grapes are developing nicely and look perfect.
The fruit set in 2019 has been great!
You will also notice the common practice in the UK is to remove some leaves from around the fruit zone. This leaf thinning increases light penetration to the bunches, allows for better airflow, and reduces disease pressure.
At this moment in the vineyards we are just approaching veraison. This is the period the red grapes start to take on sugars, soften and change colour. Our white grapes obviously don’t become red, but rather soften and start to enlarge as the sugar content increases and the acid levels start to drop. This is an exciting period in the grape growing calendar and wonderful to see in person if you’re in the English countryside.
Whilst overall we are keeping very positive about vintage 2019, there are still some challenges…if you’ve noticed the humidity in London over the last few weeks you can directly feel the major challenge this vintage is throwing towards our growers. The regular and sometimes heavy rain has created increased humidity in the canopy which increases the potential propagation of mildew. Cross your fingers for some more sunshine to bring us to a beautiful finish!
In the coming weeks our winemaker and members of the Roberson team will start to make regular visits to our grower’s vineyards, sample and taste the grapes and track their progression to maturity. Check out our regular updates on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
If you want to get involved with our vintage this year there are a few spots remaining in our Crush Club. The Crush Club gives Londoners the chance to become intimately involved with London Cru's 2019 vintage, from grape to glass. At three exclusive events members will have the opportunity to get stuck into the winemaking process, and be involved with key decisions affecting the year's production.