London grape growers invited to join Community Wine Making Scheme
Do you grow grapes in your garden or allotment that you would like to have made into a clean and pleasant tasting wine? If so, then we invite you to deliver your harvested grapes to our Hawkwood Winery this autumn. The Winery will combine all deliveries into two batches to make red and white wine, and then return the finished wine to participating growers in the proportion of grapes they deliver to this year’s vintage.
Last autumn the Community Wine Making Scheme took in 500 kilos of grapes from 39 households from across London, which were made into 375 bottles of wine. In January the participating growers were invited to the Hawkoood Winery to taste their wine from the cask. They also took part in a training workshop on winter pruning of their vines.
The 2013 vintage is now in bottle and ready for pick up from the winery. Organiclea wine maker Marko Bojcun is expecting the scheme’s success in its first year will attract even more participating growers this autumn.
The minimum individual delivery the winery will accept is one full bucket of ripe, clean grapes. You can expect to get one bottle of wine for every 1.5 kilos of grapes.
In return for your grapes and a minimal production fee of £6 per bottle, Hawkwood Winery will ferment, age and bottle the wine, releasing it to you in September 2015. Your wine you will be for domestic consumption only – that is, it cannot be sold.
The day on which the grapes are to be delivered to the winery will be announced at the beginning of September, and will depend on how grapes are ripening across London in this particular year. Participants in the wine making scheme will be informed in good time to allow them to harvest and deliver their grapes to the winery.
To join this scheme please contact Marko Bojcun: mbojcun@yahoo.com – with the following information: your post code, the expected weight or volume of your harvest, the grape variety, if known, and whether you treat your vines with any sprays.
For more information read Marko’s blog here.
Watch Steve Tippell’s film “Wine Revived; community wine making in North East London” on youtube.
