Welcome to our photo journal and the earliest ever harvest – for us, at least.

Above is a rare family shot of Angela, Georgie, Sophie and Tom Quinney picking white grapes in the rows of verdant vines. We started on the 19th August.

We even began harvesting red grapes for making rosé today, Friday 29th, which is unheard of in August here. After zilch since 13 June, we had rain today and more is forecast, so it’s all very exciting.

The images of the harvest are shown below – forgive the number but they’re really just for scrolling through at your leisure. They cover:

• Another hot month
• Vines bearing up well
• The start of the harvest
• Our 27th with the same team
• Quinneys picking for Crémant
• Sauvignon Blanc in the dark
• Reds for Rosé in August
• Family holiday at home

If you have any questions, suggestions or would like to get in touch, please email us both by clicking this link.

All the best

Gavin & Angela Quinney

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This was 1 August 2025. It’s been an extraordinarily dry and hot growing season.

I look at the weather on my phone quite often. The forecast each week this month was for more sun, high temperatures and very little rain. No shortage of mid-to-high 30s and a smattering of 40-somethings.

They have consistently forecasted rain for the end of this month. Some neighbouring villages and towns saw rain on the 19th but it passed us by.

So this is the picture as of last night, four weeks on from the image above. Vines can be remarkably hardy.

My annual Bordeaux vintage report may show a decent amount of rain for the month of August but it may come all on the last weekend for some areas. For us, it will be good news for our rosé, we hope.

Back to 9th August and ‘iPhone needs to cool down' while observing our Sémillon.

Old vine Sauvignon Blanc coping well, while 41ºC is showing on 11 August.

Lush Sauvignon Blanc on 10 August.

Extremely warm in the South West and South of France. (We think of ourselves as being in the south west.)

Angela cleaning the stone around the farmhouse pool on changeover day, Friday, while bushy vines provide the shade over the outdoor table. The farmhouse is completely booked for 2026, with every week from April to October taken up. We’re relieved we took the plunge and installed air conditioning earlier this year.

The vines still holding. Merlot looking green and healthy, 20 August.

Sémillon for our Crémant, nearly ready to go, 17 August.

Time to assess the white grapes before deciding when to pick. 200 grapes from each parcel going off to the lab.

It’s a combination of tasting the grapes and the analysis, as well as minor practical details like not many pickers being around in mid-August.

Harvest day, 19 August. There’s a deep sense of creating something special from nature, otherwise known as the moment of calm before the chaos.

We’re picking the Sémillon for our Crémant from the parcel we planted 20 years ago. It is lovely and green, despite the drought and the heat.

Just enough pickers rallied to the call and turned up on the day.

The bunches are in fine fettle with not a hint of rot.

A decent yield. And some juicy bunches.

My job, other than collecting grapes to send for analysis and to taste many more, is to pose with the crop. Well, it was my idea to plant this corner of the vineyard, so that’s not unreasonable.

Another role is to marshal the troops and to hand out the chocolatines for the morning break.

By law, the bunches for Crémant have to be picked by hand into crates, so there’s no risk of oxidation of the juice.

This is the 27th consecutive harvest for Daniel, Nelly and me working together.

Nelly arrived as a trainee for the harvest in 1999, as did we. Thankfully, she stayed on.

The grapes for Crémant have to go into the press in whole bunches. It’s a process handily called ‘whole bunch pressing’.

I had to remind myself of when we harvested the grapes for the Crémant we made in 2021 – pictured above and below – which is the vintage we’re selling now and has been the most popular wine in the tastings here at the château this summer.

We picked the 2021 Crémant, above, from 13-16 September. Ange and Sophie are in the picture, along with our dogs Pavie and Margaux.

In 2025, our Crémant harvest, by contrast, was from 19-21 August.

This was the second day, 20 August.

Georgie, Sophie, Tom and Ange were called up as reinforcements. The picking was fairly straightforward as there was no rot on the bunches whatsoever.

Angela’s father David observed, while Macy, Tom’s girlfriend, was also enlisted to pick. My advice is that unless you’re accustomed to using secateurs, be very careful while cutting bunches when someone the other side of the row is doing the same thing.

Macy kindly took these photos of Georgie, Sophie, Tom, Ange and me. We missed Bugs, who’s working in London.

Macy came all the way from Canada for this. Simon and Janet, our guests in the farmhouse, also got roped in.

By the end of the third and final day, we had slightly better yields than we were expecting for the Crémant. Although below the permitted yield – there is a ceiling or limit on what you are allowed to produce per hectare for any ‘appellation’ vineyard – we made about 55 hectolitres per hectare. That’s 5,500 litres per hectare (100m x 100m square) and as there are about 5,500 vines per hectare (planting at our 1m80 x 1m), that answers the question of how much we make per vine – for white. With any luck.

Our Merlot vines on dry ground looking healthy, 20 August.

Our Cabernet Franc, probably for the Rosé, pictured 24 August.

Merlot, left, Cabernet Sauvignon, right. Both for red, probably. 24 August.

Next up for the harvest is the Sauvignon Blanc, above.

Before dawn, 27 August.

A man on the harvesting machine, for scale.

With the onboard sorter, the grapes come out looking just fine.

It makes quite a difference in the warmth of August not to be ferrying the white grapes like this too far.

The Sauvignon Blanc behind the winery. Again, green and healthy despite the drought.

We planted these Sauvignon Blanc vines in late May 2008. I remember it well because I’d just come back from a rain-soaked Moscow after watching Chelsea lose the Champions League final on penalties to Manchester United.

Here are the bunches before the machine.

And here they are straight after. The machine vibrates the vines and grapes fall off and into the hopper.

A short drive to the winery. Unfortunately, the yields for dry whites around here, notably the Sauvignon Blanc, are much lower than the norm. Not just the heat and the drought (less juice), but more an issue of fewer and smaller bunches from the start. It may be a generalisation, but that's probably linked to the weather during the flowering in June last year.

Crushed and into the press for macerating before pressing later.

Maceration, pressing, chilling, settling, cool fermentation. All quite simple really, yet every chance of messing it up.

We’ll probably finish the Sauvignon Blanc this weekend – all done by the end of August.

Stop press: we’re harvesting Merlot for our Rosé today. Photo 29 August: as you can see, there are a tasty number of bunches, which is what we need for rosé as we don’t want too much concentration of the berries.

The weather is just a little inclement, but it can be a useful (and legal) way to reduce the potential alcohol a smidge. (The 2024 Rosé, for example, is 12% abv.)

The grapes go straight into the press, and we'll use just the free run juice (not the pressed skins) to make sure it's pale and pink.

Straight to the winery.

Our summer wouldn’t have been the same without family and friends staying. From the left, Ange’s dad David, her sister Penny, Ange, Georgie, Tom and Sophie.

My sister Rosanagh stayed for a well deserved, short break. Goose the cat, right, keeping David company.

In fact, Goose seemed to appear in most photos.

It’s been a good summer for him, now he has the run of the house with no dogs anymore.

And it’s been fun to have old friends staying with us, and others at the farmhouse.

David treated us to a traditional visit to L’Entrecôte, Bordeaux’s busiest restaurant.

We were also treated to dinner at one of our favourite restaurants just outside Saint-Emilion, called Le Jardin, by our good friends Nick and Jane Somper.

They also happen to sell our wine on their Dorset Meat Company website.

And nothing beats a fine slab of home-cooked beef.

Meanwhile, live scenes…

Onwards and upwards.