Veraison is a key milestone in the vineyard and is identified as the moment the grapes start to change colour. In our Pinot Noir, this colour change is a few weeks later than last year. The crop this year is looking wonderful with large well-formed bunches across the whole vineyard. Going forward the grapes will continue to ripen, concentrating sunshine to sweeten berries, reducing acidity, and building colour, tannins, and other tasty compounds.

Interestingly the bunches and berries don’t all change colour at the same moment, rather this is a gradual process that will take some weeks. As we get closer to harvest the berries will also swell and become heavier. At this point, the grapes become attractive to birds, wasps, and other critters as they start to taste sweet and delicious.

In England, we don’t leave much to chance. The vineyard is kept mowed so that the grass doesn’t add humidity to the leaves and fruiting zone. The vines have also been tucked into the wires so that the canopy is upright and well-structured ensuring we capture every inch of sunshine possible. The leaves around the grape bunches have been removed by hand (leaf stripping) which improves airflow and allows sunlight to touch the berries.

All these activities are focused on one goal - increasing the quality of the fruit at harvest. Good airflow, careful canopy management, and reduction of humidity are all very important methods which give our crop the best chance possible.

This year we have a high fruit load per vine. This was due to a kind Spring with no frost, and a sunny June during flowering resulted in about 0.5kg extra fruit per vine. Around a 25% increase across 20,000 vines, this is a great problem to have, but it does put additional pressure on getting to harvest as we need more sunshine to achieve ripeness. Simply put, the more fruit you have the more sunshine you need to achieve phenolic ripeness (tasty fruit).

The start of this season was wonderful with a hot sunny June, but in July and now into August, we have not seen the sunshine we had hoped for. This puts pressure on the vineyard, but to this point, we are still hoping for a return of a strong sunny August and September.

Harvest this year is looking to be around the start of October, which is around two weeks later than last year. So please cross your fingers for a hot dry finish to August and September….