It’s holiday season … time to work!

For most of us, the festive season is a time to sit back, pour a glass of wine and enjoy a relaxed time with friends and family. But not if it’s your job to look after next year’s wines...

The same summer heat that signals lazy days for some, brings about heaps of activity in the vineyard. In fact, it’s even busier than harvest itself, with the vines flowering and berries starting to develop.

With the long summer days, the vines grow like crazy. We need to keep the foliage in check – leave enough leaves to power the development of our grapes, but not so much that the grapes get too little air or light. Grape berries need good airflow to be healthy and sunlight to ripen well.

Weeds love the summer heat just as much as our vines do, so they grow rapidly too. And, while we like plants in general, we rather favour our vines, and want them to get first dibs at the water and nutrients in the soil. So, we have to keep the weeds under control.

It may not sound like that much, until you factor in that if you were to string our vines in a single row, we’ll easily be able to cover the entire distance from Cape Reinga to Bluff!

None of this vineyard work can be postponed, not if we want to make sure you can again enjoy some delicious glasses of Babich wine next Christmas!