Last Friday we brought in the last grapes for what must be our longest running harvest yet. You may have seen that we kicked off with the grapes for our Crémant way back on 19 August (see the August photo journal for our white harvest) though, to be fair, the Cabernet Sauvignon is always much later to ripen.

Below are some images of the red harvest, both here and a few from elsewhere in Bordeaux. There should be some outstanding wines from the 2025 vintage.

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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I guess this is where the story of the vintage began, with the two drone shots above taken just before the really hot and dry summer. Bauduc is unusual in that the vineyards surround the château and the winery in a single estate – not the case for the vast majority of Bordeaux châteaux – and the winery or chai is quite separate from the château itself. Our farmhouse, on the other hand, is much closer to the action.

Stop press: Tom Gilbey posted a YouTube video last friday of our trip to the Médoc in July, which is mildly entertaining. Follow the link to view it here (quite noisy music at the start).

To put the film in context here’s a link to our July newsletter called The Gilbey Show. You could be forgiven for thinking that the planning for the video was somewhat last minute.

Rather than actually visit the châteaux we spent the afternoon tasting bottles which we bought in a wine shop en route on the banks of the Gironde estuary, on a park bench and in the vines. If you have any questions for us, we’re seeing Tom when he comes to stay for yet two more days from Monday next week.

Now for the harvest. I actually really like these ‘harvest zone’ signs they put up everywhere across Bordeaux.

A contrast between the start of the month after a scorchingly dry summer and the middle of it: the view from the château, 1 September v 16 September.

Pomerol, being one of the more precocious appellations, harvested mainly at the start of September. This was Merlot at Château L’Église Clinet – a tiny, top estate, on 4 September. Saint-Émilion next door tends to pick a week or so later. Merlot again at Château Tour Baladoz, a decent Grand Cru Classé, 16 September.

This corner of Saint-Émilion is certainly worth a detour for the views.

Back at base on a cloudy day and Mikaël Laizet, our oenologist from Rolland Laboratories, paces the vines with us and tastes the grapes. It’s a good idea to have a consultant who knows what they’re talking about, partly because Daniel and Nelly take some notice of what he thinks, rather than having to listen to le patron. Mikaël is essentially our consultant for making the wines, and it’s the same approach with Patrick Delmarre, our vineyard consultant. Expensive but worth it, touch wood.

You will have seen from our last missive that we like a bit of handpicking, not least for our Crémant (for which a manual harvest is obligatory anyway).

Now if these bunches of Merlot were at a top château, or if they were dodgy and needed sorting, we’d harvest them by hand.

At our end of the market (between £12 and £19 a bottle, times three in restaurants) we’d rather invest the money in taking care of the vines and the grapes to get them to the point where they can be harvested in tiptop condition by machine with its onboard sorter.

The ‘after’ shot. The grapes are shaken off.

Some vines are just not in a position to be machine harvested. These wonderful rows of Cabernet Franc at Château Tertre Rôteboeuf in Saint-Émilion are a case in point. The grapes are positioned incredibly close to the ground, let alone this row being on the edge. Oh, and this sought-after wine costs around £200 a bottle for most recent vintages.

And, coming back to the photo at the top of the page, if the winery is next to the vineyard for rapid transfer, it makes a lot of sense.

We try to make sure there are no unwanted bits going into the cuve or vat.

Back to the slopes around Saint-Émilion. There’s a machine harvester in the middle distance, on the right just below the wood. The vines on terraces on the left hand side couldn’t safely be machine harvested.

This is the Saint-Émilion cave coopérative. They have scores of Saint-Émilion growers bringing their (machine harvested) grapes, some of which have their own Château wine made there, with many of them using the ‘Saint-Émilion Grand Cru’ appellation.

Co-op produced wines can’t say ‘Mis en bouteille au Château‘ on the label but they can put ‘Mis en bouteille à la proprieté‘ if they’re made and bottled at the co-op, which can be mightily confusing.

On the right is the more artisanal, independent approach of domaine-produced, château-bottled wine. This was just beyond Saint-Émilion in the vineyards near Castillon in the appellation with the daft title of Côtes de Bordeaux Castillon. (You see now why Tom Gilbey brings me along on the video above as the ‘wine nerd’.)

At Bauduc, we waited for our Cabernet Sauvignon to ripen. Much as I’m fond of our Cabernet, it doesn’t quite have the pedigree of the great vineyards of the Haut-Médoc in some parts of Margaux, Saint-Julien, Pauillac and Saint-Estèphe.

This is Cabernet Sauvignon at Château Montrose near Saint-Estèphe.

The vineyards are alongside the Gironde estuary, many of them being on the famous gravel banks.

A small army of harvesters come all the way up from Andalusia in southern Spain for the vintage at Montrose.

The château building itself is rather modest but the vineyards can yield grapes of great quality, notably the Cabernet Sauvignon and also some Merlot.

And so to last Friday and our Cabernet Sauvignon being brought in by machine. It can be quite dangerous to take photos while on top of the machine as it trundles down the row shaking the berries off, so it’s not advisable.

With not even the slightest touch of rot there’s just a straightforward process of getting the grapes to the winery, through the final sorting by hand and into the vat.

On the left with Daniel and Guy, who still drives the machines that he started renting to us on an hourly rate many moons ago. The end of our 27th harvest together for Nelly, Daniel and me. With Mikaël who helps us turn the grapes into something drinkable.

While we had Georgie, Sophie and Tom working with Angela and me during the August harvest, Bugs was working in London. So it was fair for the two of us to catch up at Stamford Bridge on Saturday afternoon after my late flight from Bordeaux on Friday night, post harvest. This was moments from the end of Chelsea’s 1-3 home defeat to Brighton after quite a few of the seats had been vacated around us. I rather enjoyed the game – well, more than the fellow two rows behind us, by the look of it.

It’s been lovely hosting friends and family throughout the summer, straight into the harvest and, as above, into late September. We have more guests coming in October so it’s all go.

Onwards and upwards.