Chris Boiling, pictured destemming an unexpectedly large, healthy 2015 crop, continues his misadventures as a vine-grower and winemaker in Slovenia.
Every harvest, there’s a problem or two. This vintage it was too many grapes, too few functioning barrels and too few pickers.
My first vintage, a few weeks after buying our vineyard in north-east Slovenia, it was spritzers. Watering down wine doesn’t make it weaker, it makes it far more potent because you drink it like water. That was the big lesson from my first vintage. I also learned that it’s not a good idea to be mentored by a...