Gongs, boars, vines and bottles...

Paolo Vagaggini at work doing "the magic"...

It’s been quite a week; the first recognition for our 2010 Riserva from Tom Hyland who put our wine in his top five of the category in his Winesearcher article and then the happy discovery that we are the winners of Vineyard of the Year for the province of Siena from Luxury Travel Guide. We finalized the blend for our new Rosso and hope to bottle next week. The nave of the cellar is packed almost to the rafters with sealed pallets of green bottles, the corks are being made in Sardegna and the courier should appear with the labels any minute. The 01/16 will be a mix of 2011 and 2014 vintages and for the first time ever we are making 150 Magnums of our famous “table wine”. I'm looking forward to hand-numbering each one.Pruning continues under Tecnicolor blue skies; it’s practically T-shirt weather today. We have nearly finished the low-lying Castelnuovo vineyards and will start up at Le Due Porte next week. After pruning we will do the stralciatura, dragging the straggly offshoots out of the vineyard into great piles. At this time of year the hills are dotted with straight plumes of white smoke. We are also trying to ensure that our vineyards are well fenced since this is a time for maintenance and repair. As soon as we have bud-break the deer and wild boar will be out in force which is terribly damaging for the vines.

For Italian speakers, there’s a great post on the emergenza ungulati here. Apparently in Tuscany there is a surplus population of 250 thousand boars which is certainly an alarming thought. And in other news… the first wild asparagus have been spotted.