Looking back at the excitement of the 2025 vintage; harvest started a week later and with the nice cool weather last year, and abundant rain, and rather cool evenings we had in December and January, a lot of the grapes had a good acidity and nice freshness. We had to do a little bit of acidity adjustments by adding some tartaric acid, which is really awesome – it’s something you seldomly see in Welington. 
 
The drier hot conditions once harvest has started ended up hastening the ripening of the grapes and, even though we started a week late, we still finished on our usual time around the second week of March. 
 
Tasting through the tanks and barrels now, the Chenins are really standing out, so we’re really excited by what we’ve tasted. The Pinotages are also showing well, as they are undergoing malo-lactic fermentation, so that will keep them going for about another month and then we’ll have another tasting. Overall, the colour is looking good, and we believe that can be attributed to the low acidity and low pH we have this year. 
 
The crop, in general, was better than usual. We ended up with slightly higher tonnages per hectare than last year, which was already a 40% increase on the year before. We are really happy with this, as it shows that the viticultural practices we’ve implemented, and the skills of our vineyard teams are truly benefitting the vines. There were two blocks that showed a miraculous jump in yield – a testament to the commitment shown towards it.
 
We’re done with harvest, back to our normal schedule, we can sleep a tad later and dedicate our weekends to spending time with the family. We’re currently working to get some of the older vintages into bottle and then waiting for the 2025 wines to reach the stage where we can start building the blends. 
 
Out in the vineyards we’re getting ready to plant some cover crop and introducing some fertilizer in preparation of the vineyards’ rest throughout winter. We’re also looking towards the future by evaluating all the vineyards and determining what they need and how they will be treated for the next season. 

Overall, we’re really happy with the volume and the quality of Harvest 2025, and we’re looking forward to share some of the first 2025 wines with you within the next couple of months!