Shipping the 2005s

Now that the 2007 harvest is safely in barrels (where it will remain for at least 14 months) there is a slight lull the viticultural calendar before the vines loose their leaves and pruning can commence; this typically happens around mid-November.

Conveniently this relatively quiet period is an excellent time of year to be shipping the harvest of two years prior (2005 in this case). The 2005s have been in bottle for 5 months so they have fully recovered from any bottling shock, and the weather has turned cool so there is no risk of exposing the bottles to damaging heat during their transportation. (In fact, since I am working with conscientious importers the wines are transported in air-conditioned containers, so there should really be no risk in high summer either…)

The 2005s had been stored un-labelled since bottling, so preparing them for delivery means: labelling, fitting a tin capsule, packing into cardboard boxes, stacking these boxes on a wooden pallet, and finally wrapping the whole stack in lots of Clingfilm. Here’s a photo of one of the six pallet-loads that left last week, all ready bar the Clingfilm…