A look back at 2024

 

As 2024 bites the dust and the pruning season begins, the days are getting longer and we look forward to a new year and a new harvest. But first, before we rush into 2025, here’s a flash back to some of our more interesting moments in 2024.

 

January was not Dry! 

January in 2024 was far from dry. Mild wet and very blustery with storms Henk, Isha and Jocelyn blowing in from the West, the pruning team battled the elements to keep the longest task in the vineyard, pruning our 83,000 vines, on schedule. 

With  tank tastings and blending decisions made this month,  it is ‘Try’ January in the winery, so almost impossible to support a NO alcohol regime so it has to LOW (Libations Only at Work).

 

Following on from January 2022, when the Sauvignon Blanc Master Award hit the national news, it was a relatively quiet January. For those who were not completely dry, we hosted our first Vegan Wine and Food Evening for Veganuary.

 

February fanfare & fabulous fossils

February saw the exciting launch of our Trigonia series of late disgorged sparkling wines. The first in the series is a very special wine, made from our first harvest  processed in our Woodchester Winery, the Trigonia Blanc de Blancs.

One hundred percent Chardonnay from the 2016 harvest, the single vintage Trigonia was bottled in the summer of 2017 and after an extended period of six years lees aging, it was disgorged in the summer of 2023.

Why is it called Trigonia? It is named after one of the many Trigonia fossils we  find in our limestone soils, a marine bivalve mollusk and in a previous life,  a salt water clam. It is hard to believe that our Woodchester vineyards were once under the sea many millennia ago, although after a very wet year and hardly a week without rain in 2024, our fossils may have felt more at home than the vines. Our very stoney soils are full of fascinating fossils, so for those interested in geology, join us on one of our Geology Tours. 

February was the warmest February on record and one of the wettest with many counties recording more than double annual rainfall. We were grateful for our hills and free draining soils.

Later in February, our winemaker, Jeremy, featured as one of the Global Wine Masters’ Top 100 winemakers of 2024! This followed on from the success of our Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris wines achieving Master and Gold Medal awards in the Global Wine Masters competitions against international competition from around the world. Who would have thought that an English wine maker from the Cotswolds could achieve such recognition. A glass was raised.

 

March welcomes a new member of the Team. 

March welcomed the exciting arrival of a new member of the Woodchester Valley team, a beautiful baby daughter for Chloe and granddaughter for Fiona, Ottilie was born on the 22nd March and is already demonstrating an excellent and adventurous palate.

Along with the birth of Ottilie, Spring finally arrived with the vines stirring from their winter dormancy. 

In March, our Bacchus 2022 made it into the top five English Bacchus wines  in the Great British Wine’s Spotlight on Bacchus with a lovely tasting note from John Mobbs:-

‘What made the Woodchester (Bacchus) stand out was its fragrant but refined nose, combining aromas of nettle, citrus zest and light stone fruit, with more distinctive notes of white pepper and flinty minerality. The palate was whistle-clean, preserving the brilliantly bright expression and embracing the finely textured and incredibly appealing layers of minerality and lemon sherbert brilliance’. 

 

April Showers

After a wet and windy end to winter, bud burst was later than normal. I wrote in my spring blog that ‘April was wet, overcast and rather uninspiring, nearly half a degree warmer than average, with higher than average rainfall and lower than average sunshine.’ Little did I know that ‘uninspiring’ would be the weather pattern for the rest of the year.

However, bottling time is always a highlight at the vineyard and in April we bottled and boxed 75,000 bottles of still wine from the bountiful 2023 harvest including a new wine called Tenterhook, a blend of barrel fermented Ortega and Siegerebbe which is proving very popular among our customers.

 

May -be we should start a brewery? 

At the beginning of May,  we were delighted to be voted the Best Beer and Wine specialist in the regional finals of the Muddy Stilletos Awards 2024. Hotly contested, the voting went down to the wire and a huge thank you to those who voted for us. About the beer part? No comment…

May is a wonderful month in the vineyard with budburst complete and the vines shooting fast. On the 11th May all was looking good with plentiful inflorescences and happy vines. The season had started with promise.

On the night of the 10th May, the Aurora Borealis visited the skies over Woodchester, Stroud and Minchinhampton, a beautiful sight to see.

 

June blew hot and cold with a touch of Gold 

Believe it or not there was a brief spell towards the end of June which I called a heat wave in my summer newsletter. It was short lived. At the most critical time for the flowering of our vines, the weather turned cold and wet. As a result flowering was extended and pollination and fruit set was not as successful as we would have liked.  The implications of this change in weather became very apparent at harvest - read more in September.

The hot spell coincided with The Cheltenham Food and Drink Festival, where we hosted an English Sparkling Wine Garden as the Sparkling Wine Sponsor. It was a beautiful weekend and the team enjoyed meeting and talking with old and new customers who visited our garden.I am delighted to say that we will be back again this year.

The highlight of June, was without doubt our triple Gold Medal win at the WineGB Awards 2024 with our Reserve Cuvée, Rosé Brut and Blanc de Blancs 2018 all winning Gold Medals against some very tough competition. Another glass was raised.

 

July sparkled in cool and dull conditions…

In early July we bottled our 2023 sparkling base wines from the bumper 2023 harvest. At the end of July we celebrated our first sparkling wine trophies as joint winner for best Blanc de Blancs with our 2018 vintage and as Best Producer in the West in the WineGB Awards. It was a wonderful tribute to the hard work and dedication of our vineyard team and winemaker, Jeremy. A glass was raised.

Another year, another Chalfest and the Woodchester Valley team were delighted to be part of the Party on the Hill. As the official wine sponsor, our English Wine Garden had a great location with a view of the main stage, and a chance to catch up with some of our lovely local customers -  who would not want to work this event?

As for the weather, well, July was a damp squid. It started wet and cold with average temperatures well below normal and the flowering of our Woodchester vineyards stuttered through to the end producing an uneven fruit set. It was clear that 2024 would not be another bumper harvest.

 

August was Brighter 

A warmer August helped our vines catch up with veraison getting underway in the earlier varieties and the fruit was looking clean, if not bountiful. We were optimistic for a dry and sunny September.

The launch of our Pinot Précoce 2022 on Pinot Noir Day was a great success with Vélo Pizza joining us with their delicious sourdough pizzas for our Pinot and Pizza wine tasting.

 

September – The waiting game

September is an important month in the vineyard to help ripen the grapes and in 2024, September was dull, overcast and humid, perfect for disease. Late season downy mildew hit many English vineyards with a vengeance leaving their vines defoliated well in advance of the normal autumnal leaf fall. We were fortunate to escape the worst and our fruit was clean. The extremes of cool climate viticulture can be challenging and the start dates of our harvests since 2016  have varied from the 9th September, our earliest, to the 3rd October in 2024, nearly four weeks. Our Trade Harvest Festival took place at the end of September without the harvest having started!

A rare glimpse of the sun arrived for our September Dog Walk evening tour and we partnered up with Burleigh Court for their delicious Harvest Supper Menu paired with Woodchester Valley Wines. It went down a treat. The highlight of the evening for our team was the dessert pairing: Bread & Butter Brioche pudding with smoky bacon ice cream enjoyed with our Pinot Rosé.

October was damp

Harvest finally started in earnest and in between the wet and windy days we picked a small but good quality 50 tonnes of grapes.  We were not immune to the dreaded mildew and by the end of the first week in October, late season downy was evident on the leaves but not on the fruit  at our Woodchester vineyard Coupled with a very early frost when temperatures fell to -1.6 on the morning of the 11th October, the vines were finding it a challenge to hold on to their leaves.

We celebrated the ‘almost’ end of harvest with an amazingly delicious harvest meal hosted by the equally amazingly talented Shane Bagley and his team. We hope to be scheduling some events with Shane during 2025 and will keep you posted.

At the end of the month we heard the good news of a silver medal for our Cotswold Classic 2021 in the Glass of Bubbly Awards in the Zesty and Zingy Category. It was a clean sweep with all four of our Cotswold Sparkling wines winning medals in 2024.

 

November – still picking

The final pick of the harvest was on the 3rd November bringing to an end one of the wettest harvests we can remember and the smallest harvest since 2016. It was quite a contrast to 2023 when we picked over 170 tonnes. Life in a cool climate can be a roller coaster.

With the ferments quietly bubbling away in tank or barrel, our Geology Tour guests took a journey through time discovering the fossil rich history of our limestone soils under the expert guidance of our resident Geologist, Rachel. One of our limited edition events, the Geology Tour is only held four times a year and is often booked up well in advance. our next tour will be on February 23^rd. 

 

December Festive Fun

December started with our first Corking Christmas Crafternoon wine tasting, a chance to let your artistic talents?  loose on some sustainable Christmas creations with our used corks, wire hoods and a bit of imagination …… helped along the way by a wine flight. A great afternoon was had by all.

A full house turned out for our Grand Christmas Tasting, a rare opportunity when our full range of wines is available to taste, accompanied by a cheese and charcuterie board. With 13 wines on the menu, it was a merry affair and a great way to get into the festive spirit. Our next Grand Tasting will be in English Wine Week in June.

Christmas is a busy time for the sales team and the Woodchester Valley elves wrapped and packed and packed and wrapped their way through December to make sure our customers received their wine in time for Christmas. Santa would have been proud.

We hope you had a great 2024 and would like to thank all our customers for their wonderful support and interest throughout the year..  

We hope to see you in 2025.