Well, what a week! The winery has been jam-packed with barely an inch to spare.

We have been doing the normal cellar work along with the added bottling of three wines in a 10th of the normal space. My cellar skills have been thoroughly tested this week but we have made it through and all the wines are safely in bottle.

The VC and CY are just stunning wines and have the newly passed appellation of Vin de France which replaces the old Vin de Table. The change allows us to now put the vintage and grape variety on the label just like the AOC’s.

Tony has long been discovering, making, buying and delivering to the UK customer, high-quality wines from the so called ‘lesser’ wine producing areas without the help of the complicated French appellation system. I think this long awaited advance in French regulations now gives justice to those fabulous wines which we have discovered and will continue to discover.

The builders have progressed significantly and nearly all the beams and walls upstairs have been sand-blasted clean of the 150 years of accumulated dust, exposing the most beautiful wood and local stone. I am also becoming accustomed to the daily routine of brushing down my desk from an inch of dust each morning!

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