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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Toot toot! In her piece for the Telegraph last week called ‘The best bubbles for the bank holiday’, wine correspondent Victoria Moore kindly included our delicious sparkling wine.
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“The new vintage of Quinney’s Château Bauduc Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Bordeaux, France (£13.25 in cases of six, delivery free in England and Wales for orders of 12 bottles, bauduc.com), has just landed. Crisp, streamlined, mostly sauvignon, excellent. Definitely a buy. People like it so much that Quinney is thinking of buying even more white vineyards. Though he says some think he is “stark, raving mad”.
Victoria Moore in the Telegraph, Saturday 19 April 2025.
Sauvignon Blanc 2024 – Switzerland
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The first shipment of our 2024 Sauvignon Blanc and Rosé arrived this morning in London City Bond and, as the sun’s coming out, it seems a good moment to launch them on our website. The wines will arrive with our importers in some countries like Switzerland this week as well.
Both wines, with our without the Rick Stein signature labels, are from our 25th full season at the helm and the best we’ve made since 2020.
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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.
My annual Bordeaux vintage report is published on JancisRobinson’s fine wine website and on Liv-ex – the fine wine marketplace. To find previous ones, see ‘Bordeaux reports’ in the menu above.
Here’s my annual report on the amount of wine produced in Bordeaux last year, and how the weather shaped the size of the crop, and the wines, in 2024. (The top image is of the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest at Château Lafite Rothschild on a sunny October day. Below is a sorting table at Château Figeac in Saint-Emilion, also in October 2024.)
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Mid-winter may feel a little bleak right now but there are, we trust, some brighter days ahead.
We’ve been preparing the blends of our white and rosé 2024 for bottling next month and they’re both excellent, touch wood, albeit with lower yields all round.
The UK prices of our reds will have to go up from today, regrettably, as the new duty rates kick in after midnight tonight. We warned our customers earlier this week, so we’ve been busy with a flurry of orders.
There’s also been a big birthday in the family this week – where has the time gone? – but we’ve also placed a sad announcement in today’s Times. More on these below.
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Sandwiched in between the joys of Black Friday and Advent Sunday, we bring you glad tidings with a festive guide to the changes in UK duty which will kick in at the end of Dry January. You may want to adjust your wine purchases accordingly in the run up to Christmas to avoid a bleak mid winter soon after, and beyond.
There has been some confusion about how wine is going to be taxed and by how much, so here is a handy portfolio of tables, graphics and photos.
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