We hope you’re having a good summer.

We’ve just said goodbye to our great friends, the Gilbeys, so here’s a photo-journal of the last 10 days, spruced up towards the end with a few pictures from the archives.

Before that we have a quick look at the bunches in the vines as véraison is well under way in the vineyard as the grapes change colour. There’s a way to go, and we don’t want to tempt fate, but with any luck 2025 will be another to follow in the sequence of very good Bordeaux vintages every year ending in zero or five since 1990: 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020…

We were married on Bastille Day in July 1990, in fact, and back then we couldn’t have imagined we’d experience the vast majority of those harvests, with 2000 being our first full season in charge here.

We’ll keep you posted on the next one.

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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A feature of 2025 so far has been how green and lush the vines have remained despite the drought and the heat, as evidenced by the dry grass surrounding them. These are the Merlot vines looking back from the house towards the drive, 21 July.

Angela with those Merlot vines, 5 July and yesterday, 30 July. Still going strong.

The same Merlot bunches at her feet, 5 July and 30 July.

Merlot, destined for our Rosé, 30 July.

Merlot at Bauduc, advanced for the end of July (31/7) - for our red.

Merlot – which ripens before the Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon – on 26 July.

The rows on the gravelly soils here look surprisingly verdant. (Merlot, 26 July.) The forecast is for more sun and no rain – at the moment – so the vines may get extremely thirsty. Under French law, vineyards with an ‘appellation’ are not allowed to irrigate their vines, with few exceptions.

The Gilbey Show

We mentioned our mate Tom in April last year, when he ran the London Marathon and ‘blind tasted’ 25 different wines en route, with a brief pause for each one every mile.

His fantastic effort went viral – search Tom Gilbey wine marathon – and his Instagram account @tomgilbeywine has taken off. When I met up with Tom in December 2023 he had 2,000 followers. He now has over 660,000. (Photo credit in The Times, above: Broni Lloyd-Edwards.)

It was literally a sterling effort and he raised over £24k on his Just Giving page for the team at Sobell House hospice, who nursed his mother Caroline. Bauduc UK customers contributed £1,200 of that as we donated 25p for every bottle sold online during the first half of May 2024.

Fast forward to this July when Tom and his camera crew came to stay for a few days. They’d filmed at a couple of spots around Bordeaux on Monday 21st and arrived after dinner, so the planning began over croissants and coffee the following morning. A few of their tentative reservations at châteaux hadn’t been confirmed so it was seat of the pants stuff.

Tom and his son Fred, who’s the producer-director-camera guy-chauffeur, wanted to go to Saint-Émilion which is just 30 minutes from us. (The city of Bordeaux is 30 minutes away too, in another direction.) So I took them to a wine shop where I’ve bought some bottles from time to time. Finding a wine shop isn’t that difficult in Saint-Émilion, to be fair, as there are scores of them, but we wanted to film an unscheduled tasting in a photogenic, private room so we had to ask nicely.

I selected a 2020 Grand Cru Saint-Émilion (the fairly basic level, despite the Grand Cru moniker) in the €20-30 bracket, a 2018 Grand Cru Classé (a step up) for just under €50 and a 2014 Premier Grand Cru Classé (close to the top rung) for €100. They were all very good wines, with the Château Fleur Cardinale 2018 in the middle just edging it for both of us for relative value and quality.

An unplanned lunch at the well-known brasserie opposite called L’Envers du Decor went down very well with the team. Our wine tip would be that the dry white of Château Tour de Mirambeau, an Entre Deux Mers at €24, was far better value – more enjoyable even – than the crisp Sancerre at €65.

Videographers Aaron, left, and Hayden had slightly different dietary requirements. Aaron is trying one of the oysters that Tom and I ordered, before his terrine of foie gras followed by steak tartare, while Hayden, a vegan, had the soup and then a tomato dish. Still, it set them both up well for the filming at Clos Fourtet a short walk away.

Clos Fourtet is a lovely property right next to the town of Saint-Émilion. When it became clear over the croissants that no vineyard visits had been confirmed for the Gilbey roadshow, I called the estate director Emmanuel at Clos Fourtet and he kindly lined up an afternoon visit.

It’s a Saint-Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé. This highest classification is divided into two levels – A (Châteaux Figeac and Pavie) and B (Clos Fourtet and 11 others). There are 71 Grands Crus Classés and hundreds of regular Saint-Émilion châteaux labelled as ‘Grand Cru’, so this was a high ranking treat.

Emmanuel roped the lovely Sophie into showing us around, and to line up some bottles to taste.

Clos Fourtet is one of the few properties with impressive limestone cellars. There are 13 hectares of underground galleries and the stone was quarried out many centuries ago for stonemasons to construct buildings and monuments locally and around the Gironde.

Handily for wine, the temperature remains constant at 13-14ºC so the wine from the vineyards above is aged in barrel for around 18 months and the subsequent bottles stored, unlabelled, in the cellars.

They kindly opened a bottle of the excellent 2003, which was a hot year but a highly successful vintage for the estate. (There aren’t many left, judging by the small stash behind Tom and Sophie.) Tom got fairly excited by the whole shebang and was duly filmed by Fred as he showed his appreciation.

We were joined by Matthieu Cuvelier, whose father Philippe bought the property in 2001.

They couldn’t have been more accommodating, especially Sophie who gave us so much of her time.

So it was au revoir to Sophie and bonjour to Ange, who immediately put Tom to work in the garden.

We don’t normally put the barbecue so far from the house, but Fred sensibly wanted it there for the camera angle. Delicious beef as ever from our local butcher – his establishment is called ‘Tout le monde s’y retrouve’ but we call it simply ‘the man’ after him. The rest of the ingredients were vegan compliant.

A plan was hatched over the côte de boeuf for the following day. That was to drive a fair way up the Haut-Médoc and film along the left bank of the Gironde estuary, and we took Sophie as she’s one of Tom’s biggest fans. First stop was the understated Château Cos d’Estournel in Saint-Estèphe, for a quick camera shot and chat about the gravel outside. Likewise at Château Pichon Baron and Pichon Comtesse de Lalande down the road in Pauillac. The main filming was for Tom’s YouTube channel, which he started only a few months ago and he’s already clocked up nearly 40,000 subscribers (it’s free).

A simple lunch on the quays in Pauillac afforded me a classic name-drop moment as I introduced Tom to Éric Kohler and Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy, the technical directors of Château Lafite-Rothschild and Château-Mouton-Rothschild respectively. No bitter rivalry here.

Then it was down to Saint-Julien and on to Margaux, with the plateau of Brane between Château Brane Cantenac (left, in the background) and Château Palmer. And an obligatory pose (and plastic glass of red) outside Château Margaux.

Fred took the selfie with the hard-working Hayden and Aaron, before we took them to the airport.

I don’t know what it’s like for Tom on his home patch in London but there were numerous fans who greeted him around the Bordeaux region, including the lads on the left at the airport and this couple in Saint-Julien. Not just Brits or Anglophones either – he’s Spanish and the young lady was from the Netherlands. In fact, ‘young’ was the operative word – all the fans (from Saint-Émilion to Bordeaux and beyond) were in their 20s – if that – or 30s. I can’t recall anything like it, wine-wise. It really is quite something.

We ran out of time to consider home cooking after the airport – Ange had driven there to meet us with some of the camera gear and cases – so it was restaurant Chez Titut in our local town of Créon. Good wines again and as ever one of the better dry whites on the list was one of the cheaper ones (go for young Entre Deux Mers or good Bordeaux blanc).

The following day saw us down tools on the wine tour front as Tom’s wife Beth and their three other children flew in to join us at the château. Tom was back to work on the barbecue, using vines as fuel of course.

Last Friday was Fred’s birthday, his partner Shekina flew in and all they moved into the farmhouse, which they’d booked yonks ago. In case it’s not clear that is an inflatable crown on Fred’s head.

Fred has in fact celebrated many birthdays at the farmhouse. This was in 2004, when his dad was going through a youthful phase when he didn’t have long flowing locks.

(There are only a few people that would notice that we had just planted a new row of vines between the established rows back then.)

It was a small but fun birthday party, like so many there for Fred in years gone by. The Gilbey family stayed for a fortnight nearly every summer from around 2002-2014.

Over the following days Tom worked his magic on the barbecue – this was salmon – and Beth is a fabulous cook.

The old Gilbey ritual of grilling marshmallows on skewers often used to end in tears. (I scorched the roof of my mouth once. Never again.) This time Fred had a scalding blob fall off and land on his foot.

A great weekend of sport with the cricket but more importantly the Lionesses and the Tour de France. Tom, Billy and Ange are mad for the tour.

Billy, Georgia, India, Sophie, Tom, Beth and Ange queue outside Entrecôte, left, probably Bordeaux’s busiest restaurant. The only decision is whether you want the beef cooked medium rare (à point) or rare (saignant).

The house red is perfectly ok but we go for the two ‘specials’ – the dry white from Château Thieuley, our neighbour, is terrific for €19 and Château Marjosse red for €31 is excellent. (Marjosse is owned by Pierre Lurton, who’s kindly entertained us on a few occasions.)

There is a bigger choice of desserts, though I almost always have the chocolate mousse. I now need to go on a diet.

Back to the farmhouse and for the last night with the girls, Tom is plugging both our Sauvignon Blanc and Rosé to go with his, um, lightly grilled sea bass and trout.

Tom took to the Weber a few years back as the more ‘open’ barbecue at the farmhouse used to result in the occasional mishap. (This was 30 July 2009.)

My sister Rosanagh joined us on Tuesday this week. And our Tom, on the right with his friend Billy Gilbey, flew in from Japan after being there since March. It’s great to have him at home for August before he goes back to Uni in Montreal, Canada. Billy meanwhile is going to do a Masters in Barcelona after his time at Cambridge.

Tom (Gilbey) set up his little tripod for this shot the other evening. Tom - bottle in hand - is our Tom’s godfather.

We rarely stopped laughing and it was ever thus.

I might have mentioned this before but I wasn’t really laughing on the night of Friday 2nd August 2013 after the Gilbeys had just arrived at the farmhouse and they asked us over for supper.

That was the last time we got hit by a hailstorm and lost half the crop in just a few minutes.

These little blighters, propelled at high speed by strong winds, smashed into the bunches of grapes and the leaves.

But we’ve had many more fun times with the Gilbeys. Usually with Tom masterminding the activities. 25 July 2004.

Tom with his smart camera, and the children, long before Instagram. 26 July, 2008.

The Putney massive the farmhouse, 30 July 2010 - exactly 15 years ago. Gilbeys, Padleys and Campbells – plus Quinneys.

Quinneys and Gilbeys on the coast near Arcachon, 4 August 2011.

25 July, 2014. Fred raising a glass of fizz, left, with dad Tom, standing and pouring, as usual making our Sophie smile. Keep up the good work, gentlemen.

Onwards and upwards.