There’s no more special feeling than when harvest time arrives in the vineyard. After a year of hard work and care across the vineyard, tending to the vines from winter pruning and throughout the summer it’s an exciting yet incredibly busy time of the year.
Harvest time is (roughly) at the same time each year, sometime between mid-September and early October. Mother Nature plays a huge part in this timing and the nicer the summer usually means the earlier the harvest. In the same breath, she can throw us devastating curveballs such as wasp damage, disease or wet weather. This year, we have been one of the lucky ones. Having survived the frosts earlier this year, thanks to the use of our bougies for the first time, we have been blessed with months of great weather. Our vines lapped up the summer sunshine (plus a little Devon rain) and with a little helping hand along the way from our team, produced a fantastic crop of juicy grapes.
Harvesting the whole vineyard took our fantastic team of friends and family just 4 days this year. With such great quality grapes and a brilliant bunch of pickers comes a much faster and easier pick, which helped us bring in nearly 5 tonnes of grapes in such a short time. The buzz in the vineyard is hard to beat, with the sun shining over us and the hum of conversation and laughter throughout the vines.
The winery sprung into action to process the grapes for only the second time here at the vineyard. Bunches of grapes were de-stemmed, crushed and pressed and the juice pumped away safely into the big stainless steel vats in the winery. The ferments are bubbling away as I write this, turning the juice into wine and we are breathing a big sigh of relief as we know the wine is safely tucked away in the winery on its path to becoming the next vintage, of 2021.
We couldn’t have managed our harvest alone and our family team are so very grateful to everyone who lent a hand for a few hours or a few days. We hope everyone enjoys harvest time just as much as we do!
Check out our quick video below showing this years harvest from grape to glass 🍷
