Our First Quiz Night
Our first ever quiz night was a great success. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, as much to do with the quantity of Chater wine consumed as for the entertainment and competition of the quiz itself! The rounds were all well received, particularly the unusual sounds (thanks to my friend Chris for those) and the most ‘groany’ round (when the resuls were read out), Dingbats. As you can see from the results on our
100% Organic!
We’ve been working the vineyard organically for the last few years and we’ve just received confirmation of full organic status! 
2009 Labels
Chater labels are quite distinctive and each year we adopt a theme for the ‘coloured rectangles’ (that aim to express in colour and form the flavours of each of our wines) on them. Our sauvignon labels below show the changes from 2006 to 2008, each was created by a different artist; Jenny Scott in 2006, Jane Tomlinson in 2007 and Paul De’Ath in 2008.
Dave and Roger rock the Chater winery
It was with some trepidation that we arranged our very first live music night – in the middle of September, what would the weather be like! We set everything up in the winery with the ’stage’ set up for Dave and Roger on the harvest reception area which we also became an impromptu dance floor. We needn’t have worried – Dave and Roger belted out great classics for the 50s and 60s and virtually all
Sauvignon successfully picked, eventually……
It was a cool and foggy start to the day (Wednesday 16th Sept). Ideal conditions for picking (keeps the grapes nice and cool) but maybe not quite so ideal for the pickers. Sauvignon are always the trickiest to pick, firstly because they have very short stems so finding them before snipping them off is difficult and secondly because they need to be carefully picked to avoid any rotten grapes. Good start though, very little botrytis
Storms slow us down a little!
It certainly looks to be a challenging year, after picking the grapes for the sparkling rosé without any mains water on Monday, the heavens opened on Tuesday (15th Sept). An absolute deluge that immediately deferred our plans to pick the Sauvignon on Wednesday. The weather looks to be rainy after Thursday, so come what may we’ll be out there tomorrow. Ironic
2009 Harvest Underway!
Well, it started yesterday with Cabernet Franc for our sparkling rosé but, as usual, not without a challenge. What a day. We knew it would be a challenge because we had to pick and press the juice on the same day to make a pale salmon coloured wine and the 2008 vintage is so popular that we wanted to double the quantity this year. So, up early to set everything up and picking started around
Charity Summer Fair 2009
Well this year’s event really was spectacular. It was blisteringly hot and more than 750 people came along to enjoy the fun. There were lovely art and craft stands, the presentation by the local pompiers was great and the live music by Deja-Vu while hundreds of people tucked into a hog roast was simply wonderful. To cap it all we raised more than €1200 for two local charities. Great stuff. Here’s a selection of photo’s
Fun at Bristol
Last weekend we had a stand at the annual Bristol Wine and Food Fair. It was a particularly special event for us this year as we launched our Sparkling Rosé in the UK. Made in exactly the same way as champagne it went down a storm. Iain, Chris and Annie were there for the whole of the three day event and by Sunday
Bubbling along….
A really exciting new venture for us this year – we decided to make some sparkling rosé. We harvested our Cabernet Franc grapes early especially for this wine – we needed to do this because the alcohol level of the base wine needs to be around 11% so we didn’t want too much sugar in the grapes (the secondary fermentation – more in