The year starts with winter pruning, usually in January and February and it's a cold and depressing job at the best of times. The vineyard then has a spring clean and is weeded, sub-soiled and rotavated ready for bud-burst sometime in April or May. This is always a tense time as a late frost can devastate our potential crop.

Once the vines have got going they grow away very quickly and you can almost see the growth from one day to the next, particularly if there is a warm spell during which the temperature does not drop too much at night. Flowering tends to take place around the end of June and the beginning of July. Once the little spiky white florets have set, the bunches swell rapidly and summer work quickly settles into a regular pattern of spraying (against fungal attack), pruning, weeding and rotavating.

Harvest time can fall anytime between mid-September and late October depending on the pattern of the summer weather and, again, choosing the right moment is a worrying time. So many different factors have to be taken into account - the potential for an early frost which could damage our crop, the condition of the grapes (once we get near picking we have to stop spraying which means we have the danger of fungal rot creeping in), and most important of all the ripeness of the grapes which we regularly test for sugar and acid levels. Once the optimum moment is reached and we have decided to pick we gather together some of our friends who unbelievably don't seem to mind breaking their backs for hours on end in return for a hearty harvest lunch.

Our wines take about six to eight months to ferment and bottle and, except for the sparkling wine which takes two years to process, are usually stored in our cellar by the following summer.

All our wines are white apart from one rose. We have three varieties in production - Schonburger, a German variety from which we tend to make a single variety dry wine with low acidity; Huxelrebe, another German grape which produces a light, floral medium dry wine; and Seyval Blanc, our only French grape from which we make our sparkling wine, our Elgar blend and sometimes an oaked dry wine. Another variety, Phoenix, will be coming into production shortly and that will probably be used in our sparkling. All our wines are quality graded and are Regional Wines.

The name "Elgar" seems a very appropriate title to choose for our wines with the vineyard lying as it does in the Severn Valley between the Malvern Hills and the river. Elgar is very much connected with this part of England - he was born just outside Worcester and spent many years of his life in Malvern and the surrounding area. Throughout his life he was constantly drawn back to his "beloved country" and is supposed to have received inspiration for much of his music, including the Engima Variations, whilst striding over the Malvern Hills or cycling through the country lanes.

The vineyard is now mature but I suspect we will never stop learning how to do this job. Its been hard work and we've made our share of mistakes but it has also been great fun, we've met a lot of interesting people and I don't think we would have missed a minute of it!

Excuse me, I'm just going to pop outside and sit on the terrace with this nicely chilled bottle of wine and enjoy the last of the evening sun. Cheers!