The Sunday Muse!

Small "Panther" in the sun flecks!

Looking forward to spring!

 +Philip Spalding

This week has been the darkest of the year so far in the UK.  Dark  during the day because of the cloud.  Dark at night because of the cycle of the moon which ha made it apparently the best viewing conditions of the night sky.  We have had our astronomy "festival" on BBC TV Stargazing Live (may not open outside UK) with the comedian Dara O Briain (a comedian with a degree in Cosmology and Maths) and Professor Brian Cox current successor to the great Sir Patrick Moore.  As a nation we are captivated by these great televisual experiences.  We have even had Professor Brian Cox commentating on what to see in the Sun Newspaper (a British tabloid or red top) as I discovered while having a coffee in Deja Vu , local coffee shop that is run by local people.  Was almost tempted to get my telescope out (a Sky-watcher Reflector) but must be getting old as was a little too cold!

Looking forward to spring and the sun flecks starting to come through the leaves of the apple tree has started me thinking about vegetable gardening.  I have touched on this in previous years when blogging about micro-farms  or square foot gardening and green thumbs.  At the moment with snow predicted for tomorrow will probably have to make do with making vegetable soup.

The planning of the veg patch can start now.  The experiences I will relate in this blog as in previous years.  I have started an online learning community for Haverhill (Haverhill Online Learning Community or HOLC).  We have specifically marked in  a week for Urban Gardening on the Calendar of events starting the 11 th February 2013.  The Urban Gardening  page link will soon be available on the Projects Page.  There is a great increase in interest  in the UK in growing your own, with demand for allotments up in these times of austerity.  If everybody was to turn even one square metre of their back or front lawn  into a veg growing area we would not only reduce air-miles (and that's just the start) but also gain that satisfaction of producing our own food.  It does not even have to be a square metre even growing lettuce and salad leaves in plastic bottles tied like a terrace to a balcony wall can yield good results!

To finish off for this post then the new year's resolutions have been written.  One was to eat more Cretan/Greek food which I will do so once I have found my Cretan Cookbook.  Certainly I will be blogging more about the county that I love to be part of, Suffolk and it's great food and culture.  Will have to wait a bit for some more ducks to become available I think but you never know!      

Sunday Foodie Bit! Viticulture UK!

A vineyard on Jersey: still part of the British experience

Wine a British Drink!

A Sunday in the UK.  Clear sky, just approaching dawn, at 6 am still dark, moon is starting to set.  A  male Owl on old Railway Track at bottom of the Garden, no reply to his part of the twit-ter-whoo. Probably a Barn Owl. Cat has some competition for the local rodent population at last, maybe won't have so many presents placed next to and in food bowl!  

Recently I have been blogging about the Great British Apple.  An event of note is taking take place today (30/09/12) at Audley End House, an Apple festival.  This based around the Organic Kitchen Garden at the house and features experiences from the 1880s.  Apples in this scenario would have been important for large estates attached to the house for producing cider.  Cider was used as part of the wages for the estate workers during harvest time.  Greenhouses attached to the Kitchen Gardens would have been employed to produce grapes for the table, and in some houses pineapples.  Wine would not be made from grapes since the fashion was for grapes to be presented to honoured guests.  Viticulture was not an active part of the estate management over time even though wars with France often restricted the supplies of wine.  Alternative sources often were imported from England's oldest ally the Portuguese.  Port and Madeira have long featured in English cooking and may be making a comeback, especially white port, as more people visit Portugal.

Prior to the loss of Aquitaine,  England had control of large areas what is now the premier Red Wine growing region of France.   The red Bordeaux wines we import into England as Claret come from this is area.  England has a rich history of wine making if you go back to the time when half of the western half of France was under English control (do not tell the French this as they conveniently forget this sometimes!).   In fat today a lot of the trade is till controlled by English interests.  

Flag waving over, what is the English wine (this is a specific definition as there is also British wine made from imported grapes) growing experience? The standard argument most oenologists use  to justify growing wine in England is that Romans did so in Chester and if they could do it then we can do it now.  Climate change apart from then and now, it is possible to make decent grape based wine in England.  Hedgerow wine is a different product but can be equally good!    

As I like to blog about Suffolk I am going to concentrate on identifying the vineyards in the local area to me.  Haverhill is a market town on the Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire border.  We have very near to us (about 5 miles) one of the major labels in English wine Chilford Hall.  I have visited this conference/wedding/function hall and vineyard many times.  The wine is prize winning and does taste good, a white wine grown on the Chalk slopes of the start of the Gog Magog hills close to the highest point in Cambridgeshire.  The source of the River Stour is not that far from the vineyard and consequently the soil is well drained.

Very close to Chilford on the other side of the Gog Magogs on the approach to Cambridge is the Gog Magogs Vineyard .  This is a recently established vineyard (in 1995).  I personally haven't yet tried any of the wine but since it has the same basic terroir (can we use that in England, sounds better than soil) as Chilford Hall similar good results could be expected.

A vineyard that I visited about 7 years ago when the original owners were running it is Giffords Hall in Suffolk. My house at school was named after this hall, the other two being after Kentwell Hall, and Melford Hall so has a little connection to me.  A small vineyard operated by just one couple, the tour was pretty eccentric and entertaining as  the process was explained.  Impressed by the passion and knowledge I borrowed the video of the process and used it in Science Lessons to illustrate the fact that science is a very old profession not just a preserve of 19th and 20th Century white coated individuals.  The wine was good too.  Another visit is due I think!

A vineyard  near Wixoe a few miles down the road no longer exists.  Here they may have have been following in the footsteps of the Romans.  Wixoe and the surrounding area are rich in remains of Roman settlement   It is  near here that Boudicca may have defeated the IXth Legion after she sacked Colchester.

Still in Suffolk but a little further away towards Bury St Edmunds (home of Greene King) are the two vineyards Ickworth House and Wyken Hall .  These are two vineyards that I have yet to visit or taste their products but are in my list of things to do in Suffolk.

So these are the Suffolk and Cambridgeshire vineyards within about 20 minutes drive of Haverhill.  Few places have so many vineyards so close!