When we moved here from London in good time for the September and October harvest in 1999, it all seemed rather idyllic. Everyone took August off in France, allegedly, and then you started preparing the winery just as the grapes were starting to ripen.

As we all know, times have changed. But I don’t think we ever imagined that we would have brought the whites in, both for making Crémant and for still wine, and that all the reds for making rosé would be picked before the last weekend of August. Or that most of the grapes for the dry whites and rosé would be harvested before dawn.

Below is a photo journal with plenty of images of this year’s August white and rosé harvest to scroll through at your leisure. There are unashamedly a lot of pictures of the vineyard.

If you have any questions or comments do email Gavin, Angela and Georgie by clicking this link, or reply to this email and Georgie will get back to you. We’re always happy to hear from you.

All the best

Gavin & Angela Quinney

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The photo at the top of the page of the Merlot vines alongside the drive down to the château was taken on Tuesday 25 August, before the rows in the foreground were harvested by machine for our rosé the following morning.

How the vines have remained green and verdant after numerous heat waves, several of them topping 40°C – and a distinct lack of water since May – is remarkable.

Likewise, these are the Sémillon vines that we use for our Crémant, on the second day of the harvest on 19 August. The vines just seem to deal with it, mostly.

From further away, you can see how dry the ground is compared to the lusher looking vines. In the foreground are Cabernet Sauvignon rows on gravelly soil, but they’ve just about coped.

I mentioned in the introduction above how the French like to take August off. We managed two nights at Pyla-sur-Mer near Arcachon, which was a lovely but all too short a break. This was the evening of the eclipse on the 12th of August and word was already out that the white harvest had begun around Bordeaux, so it was only a brief distraction. The calm before the storm – or rather, the very early starts.

These are older Sémillon but it would be misleading to show only the greener vines.

These are a few paces along in the same row, and they were ok until the final heatwave in August.

These too are Sémillon – some 150 metres away – so it shows that not all vines are equal in 2026. Lose some, win some. This was our Sophie snipping off the bunches on 20 August.

These are Sauvignon Blanc on visibly dry ground, and yet they seem to have created juice from somewhere, helped by the established roots of an older vine.

Overall, our yields for the whites are pretty good, all things considered, assisted by some plots with a generous amount of bunches. Like these Sauvignon Blanc, which we planted in 2008.

A crucial aspect of the 2026 harvest for us is new man, Nicolas, replacing Daniel, who retired at the end of June after a mere 41 years at Bauduc. (If you like photo journals - the years with Daniel, parts one and two, are worth a look on Bauduc.com under news or on GavinQuinney.com also.)

Nelly and Daniel had worked with us for all our 26 harvests before this one, so this was always going to be different.

Thankfully, Nico is doing a fine job after almost four months here, and he and Nelly get on really well. He’s more than capable in the vineyard and knows his onions on the winemaking front. We’re helped by consultant Patrick Delmarre in the vineyard and, pictured left, with Mikaël Laizet of Laboratoire Rolland in Pomerol, who’s our consultant oenologist for making the wine. My job is to provide the chocolatines (Bordeaux-speak for pains au chocolat), among other things.

We also work with our former employee and colleague, Hafid, right, who runs an agency for vineyard staff – through from the winter pruning to the harvest. It costs a fair bit but better to be trim and agile and not have too many permanent staff at a petit château, we think, or create bundles of paperwork in-house for temporary workers.

Daniel was from the Charente and lives there now – Cognac country – and we’ve used Guy Farge as our contractor for his harvest machines for over 25 years. Guy’s son Nathan, above, has taken over from his dad after many years of them working together – they’re also from the Charente where they have vines. So it’s out with the old and in with the new for Nathan and Nico. Nico has spent a lot of time driving tractors in the early hours over the last 10 days.

Another feature of the vintage for us are the absurd times of the harvest. I’ve been a fan of picking early in the morning, but Nico and Nathan have taken this to new levels. The problem is that all growers making white and rosé want to harvest in the morning - it was 34˚C here on Thursday 26 Aug in the afternoon - so we’ve taken a regular 3am to 6.30am berth with Nathan. Just look at the times the harvest trailers arrived at the winery noted by Nelly in her log. (The normal times for the ‘caisses’ are the crates of hand-picked Sémillon for the crémant.)

A brief diversion

Before we kick off with the photos of the harvest, a quick thank you to everyone who joined the Chateau Bauduc Fantasy Premier League before the start of the football season last weekend. There are over 220 now in our mini league, and we just wanted to post what is an unlikely, never-to-be-repeated screenshot of the pair of us in joint first spot after one week. We should say that it’ll be ‘family hold back’ when it comes to the prizes for the top dozen at the end of the season. There are 37 more matches ('gameweeks') this season, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but nonetheless this is quite funny.

The August harvest

5am on a Monday morning in mid-August isn’t ideal, but that’s when we began our 2026 harvest.

Machine picking Sauvignon Blanc, 17 August - the precocious parcel called Dageneau, which we planted in 2004 and ripens before all the others.

Clean and easy, and as the vines are moments from the winery there’s minimal risk of oxidation.

Nicolas and Nelly, left, and Mikaël, our oenologue, popped in at 7.30am.

We then went and tasted grapes in all the other parcels to check when we should harvest each block.

This was the Sauvignon Blanc nearest the château called, remarkably enough, ‘Sauvignon Château’.

Again, the vines look incredibly lush after the extended drought and the persistent heat.

The Sauvignon Blanc was coming on well despite the ultra-summer conditions.

Mikaël and I had been tasting the grapes previously. More Sauvignon Blanc – a parcel called Montuard.

This block has a limestone ridge running through it, which supports the vines well.

19 August at 7am, we began picking the Sémillon for our Crémant by hand.

Sophie and Ange were fairly surprised by how many bunches there were. I’d pulled the leaves away so that they could snip off the bunches more easily (and for a better pic).

Ange with Sophie, left, and Nico right.

Hand harvesting isn’t especially dangerous unless you don’t have a routine going with the person on the other side of the row. Plasters may be called for otherwise, or worse.

Juicy Sémillon grapes with no evidence of any mould or rot to be removed. The bunches for Crémant have to be hand-picked and placed in stackable crates as part of the strict rules in order for the wine to be called Crémant. The grapes have to be ‘whole bunch pressed’ in effect.

A mid-morning break for Gavin’s chocolatines, Nelly’s coffee and cool bottles of water. Hafid’s team usually includes women – many of whom are local and have worked on our vineyard for years – but apparently at this stage of the summer the ladies stay with the kids while it’s the men who are made available. I’m still not convinced, but there we are.

Nelly is the only lady present at this moment, but she's the one driving the tractor.

To be fair, they’re good workers, including the chattier ones.

A few photos of the Sémillon for making the Crémant.

We are currently selling our delicious 2021 Crémant – described as ‘excellent’ in the Telegraph by Victoria Moore in June this year.

The dry, still whites are bottled at the start of the year following the vintage, while the Crémant has its second fermentation in bottle around that time and is then aged on its lees for two years after that (ours has an extra 12 months on top of the standard ageing). So with the hand-picking as well as the ageing, the extra cost and poor cash flow make it less attractive financially.

The upside is a higher yield per hectare to keep the volume and acidity up, and the initial potential alcohol lower. The main thing is that our customers like the wine.

Nelly and Nico loading the bunches into the press.

We had to pick a small block of Sauvignon by hand, inadvertently. A source of water had sprung up near the bottom of one parcel and had saturated the rows.

All along the end of the rows, a large group of wild boar had thoroughly enjoyed themselves in the resulting mud. Nico had spotted more than 15 of them early one morning last week.

The small craters they’d made are what Angela calls a ‘piggy spa’. We have a few of these spas around the property.

The spas were impossible to navigate for the machine, so the ripe Sauvignon was harvested by hand. A regular Cuvée Sanglier is not on the cards though, we hope.

The rest of that block was harvested last Sunday by machine. The vines were still green and lush. After the long summer we’ve had, I find it extraordinary.

We’ve had so little rain. If you watched the Tour de France on TV, a lot of the countryside looked as parched and sunburnt as this, vines apart. (Much of England too, of course.)

Saturday and Sunday were the only days we harvested by machine after dawn, as the machine was available then due to most other growers preferring not to do weekends.

A ‘before and after shot’ of Sauvignon Blanc being harvested by machine. It’s pretty efficient.

This was 8.40am, so not long after the sun had come up.

The last load of the grapes went the short distance to the winery at 9.30am – the latest over the last 11 unbroken days for dry whites or rosé.

Nelly filling the press, and Nico watering down the trailer after the harvest machine has gone.

There is though, something special about harvesting before dawn, with the skies full of stars. This was last Sunday at 5.30am, in a different block.

Nico drove the tractors and trailers to collect the Sauvignon Blanc.

It's skilled work all round, and you need your wits about you in the dark.

I certainly prefer bringing in the grapes in the cooler part of the day.

This was Friday 21 August before 5am, on ‘Sauvignon Montuard’. In a normal year, like the excellent 2019, we harvested this block in the early hours of 15 September.

No hands here please.

We also harvest Sémillon by machine for the dry white.

Sémillon, before and after the machine.

On Monday, we had a little scare with some hail. But it only lasted a few minutes, and there was no wind to propel the cute little hailstones against the grapes and the leaves. I suspect a few people would have been hit this week. There was a storm again last night.

In passing, some of the old Sémillon vines of Les Trois Hectares. Photos from Sunday morning, 23 August. We are currently selling the 2025 vintage, which is very tasty.

This block was planted in 1947. Not sure about some of the pruning methods since then, but the trunks certainly give them an enchanting character.

After finishing the whites on Monday 24 August, it was then time for 'Rosé before dawn' on Tuesday.

For many years now, we’ve used the Merlot by the château for our rosé. This year is no different, with the grapes being harvested this week at some ungodly hour.

Nico at the ready with the trailer.

Nelly and Nico at the reception for the harvest.

The branches from the trees proved to be difficult to navigate at anytime let alone 5am.

There are all sorts of harvest issues you can plan for, but one I forgot was trimming the branches along the drive. In conference with the lads with their white vans.

We have a white van too, as we don't want to be the viticulteurs who look out of place. It's probably only me who finds that the view of a beautiful estate or château in Bordeaux can be slightly let down by a white van parked in a prominent place in the vines or close to some famous buildings.

We harvested this parcel of young Cabernet Franc yesterday morning for our rosé, as normal. When I say young, we planted the vines in 2015.

Meanwhile, these grapes have been harvested for rosé this morning, Thursday 27 August.

Handsome Merlot for the rosé today, pictured on Sunday.

Again, I don’t know how the rows stayed so green.

It’s been a dry harvest, for sure. The machine and tractor parked ready for the next morning’s harvest, 7pm Wednesday 26 August. We’ll talk about the wine making and wines later. That’s all happening now, of course – yet more work for Nico and Nelly especially. Well done to both of them – they deserve their overtime. Crikey…

On the family front, my sister Rosanagh and brother-in-law Dominic came to stay for a week just before the harvest, and for our little trip to Pyla-sur-Mer. The week before the harvest we also celebrated Sophie’s birthday.

Tom is home from Montreal in Canada, so Goose the cat has another fan in the house. Bugs was home for a while too, a few weeks back now, before heading back to London.

And Georgie works with us full time, commuting in on the fast bus from the centre of Bordeaux, where she rents a flat with her boyfriend Paul. And last but not least, we've seen many friends - and customers - including my best man Richard and Fiona O-Y who stayed over for the night. Standard pose on the doorstep obligatory.

Onwards and upwards.