Woodchurch Vineyard - Harvest report 2018 01, Nov 2018
It was our 7th harvest this year at Woodchurch and easily our biggest yet with record quantities of grapes, as well as record levels of quality. The yield was partly due to the maturity of our vines but mostly down to the fact that this year’s weather has been perfect for the vines and fruit development.
The cold weather at the beginning of the year – “The Beast from the East” actually benefited the vines as they remained dormant for a little longer and so not opening themselves up to any risk of spring frost damage. The late Spring warm and dry resulting in perfect flowering and fruit set and the long hot summer gave us clean, healthy bunches with optimum sugar and acid levels in the grapes. The concentrated fruit flavours should result in some delicious 2018 wines.
We’re not alone in terms of success, vineyards across the UK have report record yields for the 2018 harvest, Wine GB are predicting more than double if not triple the 2017 harvest which produced 6 million bottles. Many Industry professionals have also commented on the quality of fruit this year.
We started picking the 27th of September. We picked over 8 days and brought in a total of 41 tonnes of grapes. This is almost double the amount picked in 2017 (21 tonnes)
We also picked a record number of grapes in one day, an enormous 7 tonnes. We all felt incredibly proud to see the fruit loaded onto the lorry. We would like to say a massive thanks for everyone’s support and to all our paid and volunteer pickers, you were amazing!
