Harvest 2000 Report

One of the trickiest vintages since we began, with the met office being unreliable, an extraordinary amount of rain (25 inches - nearly a normal years rainfall in October), a storm force wind on the 29 October reading 75 mph, a cool July causing the grapes to be a week or 2 late anyway, and our start to our organic conversion limiting the sprays we could use on the vineyard. Having said that the sugar levels (at our Horsmonden site) are as good as 1995, 1997, 1998 and 1999 putting this harvest on a par with some of the better vintages, and better than 1994 and 1996. Our Rotherfield vineyard has produced less impressive sugar levels, but is sufficient for sparkling wine production. We were pleasantly surprised, but now have to wait to see how the wines show their flavours - some of the grapes received from other vineyards had definite flavour dilution by rain. We managed to pick in good weather on all varieties and I am hopeful that this year will produce some good wines. We have been helped by the fact that all our grapes were completely disease free and yielding below average crops (poor flower set affected Ortega, Pinot Noir, Siegerrebe), enabling us to delay picking by a week (or 2 for some varieties) compared to normal. The Faber was picked the day after the storm. In summary: 1 - 2 week late harvest dates, good sugar / acid levels, reasonable flavours, no disease or bird damage, low yield.

Update - July 2001 - Having now bottled most of the wines, we are very excited by the flavours shown in the 2000 vintage. I rate it as among the best vintages since we started. The wines show tremendous flavours, crisp balance and length. They are built to last, and yet show very well in their youth. The 2000 vintage produced a Horsmonden dry, a varietal Bacchus, A Pinot Noir / Auxerrois Sparkling wine, and small volumes of red wine, rosé wine and medium-dry white. A small trial batch of Oak fermented Auxerrois has been bottled, and this will be delicious to drink from September 2001 onwards. I believe that, together with the 1999 Horsmonden dry, and the 1997 Brut sparkling wine, we currently have a better range of wines on our list than at any other time in the past.