WHite Heron ESTATE VENDAGE

The White Heron Estate vendage is underway, and what a harvest it is. We had a very poor harvest in 2024 due to the wet summer. Grapes need a lot of sunlight in order to develop the right amount of sugars, and too much moisture is bad news for harvest. This year, however, is a different story – the grapes are plentiful and of great quality. Our 2025 vintage White Heron Estate Sparkling Wine is set to be a very good one.

Guests at our holiday properties are being treated to a real feast for the senses. The apple harvest as the apple harvest is also in full flow, and all around is the pungent scent of ripe apples. We currently have quite a stack of apples in the fruit-yard, amounting to a couple of hundred tonnes. It looks like an actual mountain. The earlier varieties, Gilly and Hastings have already been harvested. The two later fruiting varieties that we grow are Dabinet and Michelin, and will be harvested later in October. Perfect for your pint of Inches or Aspalls.

We have already harvested two varieties: the Madeline Angevine – the earliest of our three cool climate grape varieties to ripen and the sweetest of our varieties, also serving as a table grape – and the Reichensteiner, which ripens very soon after the Madeline Angevine. The third variety, Seyval Blanc is almost ready. Grape harvest is quite spectacular to watch, although done by machine. It would take us a very long time to pick our 35 acres by hand and crush the grapes with our feet, in the traditional method!