Peter's Notes September 2023

Approaching 2023 harvest

As the grapes continue to ripen, I have to allow that the 100% fruit-set (the result of perfect flowering weather) will need time to achieve full ripeness. We tend to pick at weekends, and I have provisionally earmarked starting on the 21/22 October for Seyval Blanc and the 28/29 October for the Chardonnay and Pinots. Our great band of volunteer pickers will be contacted by mid-October.

A small diversion….. Yesterday I noticed our beautiful crop of quinces from the tree I planted over 50 years ago and naughtily dreamed of making a quince wine (as if I hadn’t enough to cope with the grape harvest!)

And I’ve had yet another thought - hard-by is an old medlar in full fruit which historically was also used to make wine……careful Peter! The French call the fruit ‘cul de chien’ (dog’s arse) while Shakespeare and Chaucer called the fruits ‘open-arse’!

Reynolds Stone

I have decided to add to my September Peter’s Notes a rather extensive ‘extra’.

I am just sharing with the readership the story behind my Breaky Bottom wine label, and how I had the good fortune to meet up with the great wood engraver, Reynolds Stone.

Those of you who have other matters to tend may well be happy to have just read the current pre-harvest update….. I leave it entirely to you!

In early September I was privileged to have a visit from Humphrey, the son of Reynolds Stone.

A short while ago Humphrey completed a marvellous book ‘Memoirs of Reynolds Stone’ which took him a decade to put together, a real masterpiece showing the great respect and affection he had for his father.

I will risk writing a ‘brief history’ to tell you how lucky I was to meet with Reynolds.

In 1975 I needed a label for my first vintage and approached a dear friend, Diana Bloomfield, a brilliant professional wood engraver who lived in Lewes. She told me that with her fading eyesight she could no longer engrave and intended to spend what time she had left painting watercolours. Of course, I respected and accepted her decision and remember saying to her “who is the greatest wood-engraver in the world….” she paused for a moment, a little tear came to her eye, and she said, “….. well, there’s always Reynolds Stone”.

I wrote to Reynolds, and he sent me a beautifully engraved card saying “I like the idea of doing your wine label” – So I drove down to Dorset where he and his wife Janet lived, the Old Rectory at Litton Cheney. A strong friendship arose, and I made frequent visits and learnt so much about Reynolds, a very modest, shy man who loved nature and whose passion was engraving on end-grain box wood. Alongside his brilliance as a wood engraver, he was also a self-taught letter-cutter of stone. He was best known for his skill as a supreme typographer. I learnt that many of the headstones at Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey were cut by Reynolds, including the memorial to Winston Churchill (1965) and T S Eliot (1966) – His last work (1977) was the gravestone of his friend the composer Benjamin Britten (also the year he completed the Breaky Bottom label).

Reynolds Stone – engraving of the Royal Arms for three monarchs.

1. The Royal Arms for the Coronation of HM King George VI - 1937

2. The Royal Arms for the order of service for the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II - 1953

3. The Royal Arms of the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles – 1970

List of some of Reynolds Stone’s other achievements.

1. The Royal Arms for Queen Elizabeth II is still produced on the cover of all UK passports

2. He designed the £5 and £10 pound notes (1963 and 1964) including the Queen’s portrait

3. Many Royal Mail postage stamps, including the Dove of Peace Victory stamp, 1946

4. In the Grand Entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1952, he carved the memorial tablet to those who died in World War II

5. His bookplates (over 350) are distinguished particularly by the flowing elegance of the lettering

Breaky Bottom 2010 Cuvée Reynolds Stone

The fact that I named a wine after him continues my tradition of choosing cuvée names after family and friends who have had a significant influence on my life……and Reynolds is certainly one!

Reynolds Stone when he visited Breaky Bottom in 1975