This is the scene that greeted us this morning. We have almost nothing left. Last night we had the most enormous rain and hailstorm. We spent the morning in the roof repairing a leak, then went to the cave co-operative to see if they had a date for the harvest. 'Have you looked at your vines yet? We have an emergency and if you have more than 20% hail damage you can harvest all your grapes now, whatever variety' We shot up to the vineyards and were greeted by scenes of devastation. A tornado had passed and ripped off every bunch of grapes and the plum-sized hailstones had shredded of every bit of leaf on 95% of the vines. In the picture above you can see one bunch of grapes caught in the branches of the vine. All the others have been ripped off and carried off by the deluge to God knows where. There's no sign of them here.

Not a pretty sight eh? There is barely a leaf left on any of the vines. The only vines with any grapes left on are the Syrah and Cinsault in the amphitheatre. All the vines on the upper slopes are completely naked.

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