Year in the vines – part 15

Few sights can be more classically bucolic, surely, than a handful of shotgun cartridges kept for safekeeping in a case of local bitter, as pictured here. It is a splendidly heedless image, and testifies to the fact that the pheasant shoot is in full swing on the weekends.

During the week, winter pruning is the somewhat less jolly pastime. We are now working in the oldest vineyard, where the vigorous vines become intimately tangled with the trellis during the growing season. The wrangling required to detach the former from the latter is strenuous and undignified, an ungodly battle to reverse...