New challenges impact the 2024 harvest

The 2024 harvest at Albury is complete for another year, and poor weather conditions led our second lowest harvest on record.

This year highlights just how much of an impact the weather can have! We faced several difficulties during the course of the growing season - inclement weather at the end of June and early July resulted in poor fruit set for some varietals, heavy rain during the Summer caused downy mildew, and the absence of an 'Indian Summer' meant it was difficult to ripen the fruit which delayed the harvest.

However, two new challenges had a significant impact on this year's yields. In most years, spring frosts pose one of the biggest risks to the crop, but this year it was an unusually early Autumn frost that damaged the canopy and slowed the ripening process.

This was shortly followed by an influx of birds into the vineyard, predominantly wood pigeons looking for food. We suffered significant bird damage for the first time ever at Albury with pigeons consuming 3 tonnes of Chardonnay in 48 hours! 

This has prompted us to consider how to deter the birds next year. We already use kites and balloons, and our vineyard dogs are pretty good at chasing them out, but we're likely to also net the vines in future. Research also shows that drones can be used to scare birds away and reduce crop damage by 50%. 

Just 13 tonnes of fruit were harvested from the main Albury site compared to a usual average of 20. In total, 22 tonnes of grapes were picked across all three of our sites. Although the yield was 40% lower than average, this could have been a lot worse without the hard work of our exceptional vineyard team.

Vineyards across the UK are reporting the 2024 harvest to be one of the most challenging ever, so we're very pleased with our result given the extremely difficult conditions. Fortunately we had a very good harvest in 2023 which more than compensates for the low yields this year.

We were incredibly grateful to have had help from a record number of willing volunteers from our wine club and the local community wanting to lend a hand with the grape picking. Nearly 300 people were involved in the 2024 harvest this year.

The first wine to be released from the 2024 vintage will be Silent Pool Rosé next May and we expect to make around 5000 bottles. Albury Estate sparkling wines from this year's harvest will be available from 2027.