Thank you, thank you, thank you!
As a remarkable growing season and vintage winds down, here at Greyfriars we have a short time to rest, recover, clear up and reflect before the excitement of the run up to Christmas (I can’t believe I mentioned it) starts in earnest. An amazing Summer culminated in a mostly smooth and extraordinarily large harvest with a total pick of 232 tonnes – way above our best estimate of 176 tonnes. Not only was the harvest large, but it was also healthy and beautifully ripe, starting on the 11th September finishing on the 27th, which is about a month ahead of where we are in a ‘normal’ year and 13 days ahead of last year’s record early start.
If there are six or seven things that can go wrong during the growing season; a good year means we only have two calamaties. However, this year at Greyfriars we were incredibly blessed with near perfect growing conditions. Even the May frost, which hit many English vineyards very hard, only nipped a few of our vines at the lowest point of the vineyard. However, the law of averages means that next year will almost certainly see at least eight or nine things go terribly wrong, but that is the nature of viticulture in the UK but let’s be thankful while we can.
This year, on our three volunteer picking days we were joined by more than 250 happy pickers who collectively harvested about 38 tonnes of beautiful fruit which will be used in some our top still and sparkling wines; most likely including our Blanc de Blancs, Rose Reserve and Cuvee Royale as well as still Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. It was great to see a lot of old friends and familiar faces back again and to top it all you have raised a total of £2,440 for the Surrey Wildlife Trust, a charity dear to our hearts. Thank you again for all your hard work and enthusiasm and please don’t leave it until next harvest to come and see us again. Wear your Scorchio tee-shirt with pride – you’ve earned it!
A successful harvest is truly a team effort across the entire business and I must say a huge thank you to the entire Greyfriars team for all the hard work over the last year that resulted in Harvest 2026. This was despite the usual equipment breakages – why is it that everything with wheels on fails at exactly the same time in harvest?
While the rush of harvest is now disappearing into the rear-view mirror, the work of turning our fruit into award winning wine is only just beginning. This year Oliver, our winemaker, is also juggling a tricky game of Tetris to ensure that all our juice fits into the barrels and tanks at the right time to ensure we get through the next few months until we start blending.Without wanting to jinx things, early tastings hint that we are in for some really special wines and 2026 looks like another great year for still wine.
After closing down our tours and events for a few weeks during harvest, I am delighted to say that our Autumn tour season has resumed and the vineyard still looks beautiful in the unseasonably warm Autumn weather that we are currently experiencing. While I’m sorry to say that the horsebox bar has closed for the season, the tasting room is open if you fancy dropping in for a tasting or a glass of something delicious! We also have a number of other special seasonal events over the next couple of months at the vineyard and we will also be out and about at lots of outside events over the coming weeks. As always, the best place to find out what’s going on is to visit our website.
As always, thanks for your support we really couldn’t do it without you.
Mike and Hilary