Back in the cold, wet days of September and early October when things were looking grim, when most people panicked, we held our nerve. We remained patient and hopeful, drawing on our combined decades of experience growing wine on the South Downs, and generally remained calm – even if pretty pissed off at times.
We saw vineyards in other areas devastated by disease early in the season, and felt terrible for our friends and fellow wine warriors. Remember those 35°C temperatures at the end of July that were followed by thunderstorms? Warmth and moisture, the perfect conditions for rampant downy mildew – if that gets hold early in the season, it can be curtains. And for many it was, before Act 3 had even started...
I'm often asked how we deal with bad weather, an unpredictable climate, sudden frosts or disease outbreaks at critical times of the growing season, and how I sleep at night? My answer is... usually very well. I'm knackered. My motto is manage things you can manage, as best and obsessively as you can, and then hope for a bit of luck. It eventually comes around.
In spectacular years like 2023, our biggest crop ever by far, there was a heatwave in the second half of October, which ripened our Chardonnay and Pinots to perfection and got us over the line. We didn't have that in 2024. The end of the season was as uneventful as it’s meandering middle; despite July having the hottest day of the year, this critical month was both colder and wetter than average, so we just had to fight fungal disease, play the long game, hope for the best and wait.
And wait we did. 2024 was our latest harvest since 2013 and we picked into the first week of November. But something remarkable happens in cool climates when temperatures are so low for so long: the sugars don't accumulate in the usual way, nor do the berries become juicy and sweet. But they still ripen physiologically – or 'phenologically' to use the correct horticultural term – as, after all, vines want to spread their genes by persuading animals or birds to eat their fruit before the year's end. It must taste as delicious as possible, so flavour molecules build as winter approaches... and that makes better wine. To happen successfully, the vine needs resources that just aren't there if they are sick or unhappy. Hence our hard work all year, managing things we could manage, and hoping for the best.
Even as picking looms closer, I'm never that surprised at how low the sugar levels look – especially if we've got brown seeds, and the berries come away easily from the bunches. This is almost as true a measure of ripeness in a cool climate in a poor year, and guess what... it can be tasted in the barrels.
Happily, the wines we made in 2024 are far better than we could have expected back in September, and that's because we held our nerve. So now to 2025: with hard work and a bit of luck, it'll come around again.
Dermot Sugrue, Winemaker