Surrey
Albury Organic Vineyard, Surrey – Nick Wenman, owner: “2018 is set to be an exceptional year. With no significant frost damage and a very warm summer to ripen the grapes, we have had a bumper crop of excellent quality fruit equating to twice last year’s yield and 40% more than any year since the vineyard was planted. The 2018 vintage will help to meet the rapidly expanding demand for our wines and will allow us to cellar some reserve wines to be used for more challenging years in the future”.
Denbies, Dorking, Surrey: “We harvested over 400 tonnes of grapes and which will produce just over 500,000 bottles in total of still and sparkling wines, certainly one of Denbies’ largest ever harvests.
“We are quietly optimistic about a small parcel of Ortega which we are hopeful will produce botrytis-affected berries for a delicious, honeyed dessert wine. These grapes will be left on the vine as late as possible, in order to concentrate sugars and flavours, before gentle hand-picking later this month. The hand-picking enables us to keep berry skins intact and gentle pressing gives the best quality free-run juice for fermentation. The juice will be partly fermented in oak and partly in stainless steel, to enrich the wine and add complexity”.
