We had the earliest harvest on record this year, beginning in early August in some places. But it’s also been a long one, with Château Pavie in Saint-Émilion still harvesting their Cabernet Sauvignon this week. The photo above was from last Friday, 25th September, as they picked their Cabernet Franc.
So here’s a September photo journal of the red harvest at some randomly chosen vineyards across Bordeaux, starting with our own.
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When we moved here from London in good time for the September and October harvest in 1999, it all seemed rather idyllic. Everyone took August off in France, allegedly, and then you started preparing the winery just as the grapes were starting to ripen.
As we all know, times have changed. But I don’t think we ever imagined that we would have brought the whites in, both for making Crémant and for still wine, and that all the reds for making rosé would be picked before the last weekend of August. Or that most of the grapes for the dry whites and rosé would be harvested before dawn.
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Our vineyard manager Daniel retired at the end of June, having started at Bauduc way back in 1985. We have put together a photo journal of his time with us, and we sent the first part out last week – click here if you missed it.
Here’s the second part. Above is a photo of Daniel and Nelly with us five years ago during the 2021 harvest. We’ve all worked together since our first harvest in 1999 – we took Nelly on as a trainee then.
If you have any comments or questions, please email Georgie, Angela and Gavin by clicking this link, or reply to this email and Georgie or Angela will get back to you.
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Tuesday, 30 June 2026 was the last working day for Daniel, our vineyard manager. Remarkably, he’s been at Château Bauduc for over forty years and of course he’s been with us since our first harvest in 1999. We said our goodbyes this morning (below).
2025 was his final harvest and when people talk of Bordeaux 2025 being another in the series of excellent vintages that end in five or indeed zero, it is extraordinary to think that Daniel was here at the very start of that sequence in 1985 (1980 not having been a good year).
We celebrated his last day with a fine lunch in our garden with his partner Christine, a few Quinneys and some of his closest colleagues. We kicked off with our Crémant de Bordeaux 2021, and it’s appropriate that our photo at the top of the page is of Daniel with the baskets of grapes for that wine. It’s also timely that Victoria Moore described our 2021 as ‘excellent’ in her review in The Telegraph last weekend of ‘the best (and worst) crémants of the summer’.
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This month’s news review is a meandering journal of images to scroll through at your leisure. The vineyard, fallen trees, floods, the bottling, various trips and family snaps – life’s rich tapestry.
We’ll leave the spring sales pitch for the not too distant future.
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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.
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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.
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What a scorcher. Though to be fair it’s probably as hot here as it is for any of our readers at the moment: 40˚C is the forecast for 1 July. Crikey.
So that heralds the return of the famous Bauduc Rosé summer cocktail as a headline act, shown below. Our Crémant 2021 however is hard to beat as an alcoholic refreshment, and the visitors and buyers at the château this month have almost always included some Crémant as part of their order. The Rosé wasn’t far behind.
The vines are in good shape so we’re hopeful that they’ll withstand the summer heat for a while, touch wood. It’s been a hectic month and we’re only scratching at the surface of what’s been happening with this photo journal.
Some sad news though as we pay tribute to Pavie, the last of our ‘three musketeers’ and a true, small dog of the vineyard and of the Bauduc family.
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This thrilling collection of weather graphics through the years serves really as an appendix to my Bordeaux 2024 weather and crop report. I started preparing these images of the daily rainfall and temperatures during the growing season in 2016 and they are all shown below.
September is harvest month for us, so unsurprisingly it’s been a busy one. Please forgive this lengthy journal of pictures, which is really designed for you to scroll through when you have the time and, indeed, the inclination.
Equally, after completing 25 growing seasons at Bauduc, we’ve nearly reached the stage where it might act as a useful aide memoir.
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