Once upon a time wine bottles were closed with glass and wax. Then producers discovered cork and the plopping of corks became part of the ritual of wine drinking, so much so that many wine lovers were aghast when screwtop closures first appeared a decade or so ago.

The use of screwtops is now fairly ubiquitous, especially in the New World, and most tradition-bound cork lovers have reluctantly accepted that they are here to stay. Some even grudgingly accept that screwtops have some big advantages over cork; no more corked, undrinkable wines for example. Even more grudgingly accepted is the notion that with young whites especially, screwtops better preserve the aromas and flavours of the wine.

We desperately need a good, warm autumn if any wine is to be produced at our vineyard in Kaszubia this year.

This is largely because Spring was so cold, damp and miserable that the vines, and pretty well everything else from strawberries to fruit trees, had their budding delayed and then truly enaemic growth during an unseasonably cold May. By the time the warm weather started in June, the vines were two to three weeks behind where they ought to have been.