Each vintage is a celebration of time and our terroir. Each one is distinct, each one is shaped by the land, people, and nature. In 2024, we had time to find poise. It was an remarkable harvest, producing beautifully balanced wines with elegance, power and restraint. Deeply thought-provoking wines. It was a vintage that rewarded precision. Each pick, each parcel, each ferment was handled with a jeweller’s attention to detail – a deliberate pursuit of purity.
Vintage 2024
Technical Report from Senior Winemaker Phil Brodie Vintage is, for us, a celebration of the reflection of time and our terroir—each one distinct, each one shaped by the land, people, and nature. In 2024, we had time to find poise. The 2024 was an incredible vintage, producing beautifully balanced wines with precision—powerful yet restrained, and deeply thought-provoking. Wines with a degree of umami, salinity, and acidity to focus the wine, give tension and energy, and sweeten the tannins on the finish. The wines have delivered an amazing sense of place.
Winter – Spring
Early winter was dry, then came some rain, which was needed to replenish our underground water table. Thankfully, we received a beneficial volume of rain in the early part of spring that gave us the ability to recharge our soils and grow a healthy, full canopy. From there on, we received very little in terms of significant rain events, and with a cool, dry, windy flowering period, smaller bunches formed, promoting reduced potential yields. We then began to see blocks experience levels of water stress. Given intimate knowledge and understanding of our soils across the various subregions, we started increasing irrigation to allow the vines to combat heat spikes in late December and January.
Summer – Autumn
December to early February saw rapid heat accumulation with above-average temperatures. There was very little rain over these months, giving clean canopies, clean fruit, controlled vine stress, and very small berries on both whites and reds. These factors, combined with exceptionally low cropping rates, produced an early harvest, starting with some hand-picked Chardonnay for Elston on 26 February with good sugars and balanced acids.
Harvest
Harvesting continued through into April with classical daytime temperatures in very dry conditions, combining with tiny berries to produce significantly lower yields, both in cropping rates and juice yields. As a result, the whites showed great intensity and tension, with wonderful natural acidity, and the reds are deeply coloured with plenty of extract, rich with purity, complexity, and length.
Conclusions – Notes of Significance
• A very dry preceding winter
• Early onset of vine stress monitored by new advanced technology coupled with precision irrigation
• Above-average heat summation (1590 GDD — Growing Degree Days)
• A tapering of warm nights in early February led to retention of acids, contributing to
the wines’ varietal expression, balance, and wonderful length
• Beautiful clean fruit with no disease pressure
• Exceptionally low crops with tiny berries and great concentration
• White wines – acid retention, pure with intense complexity
• Red wines – deeply coloured, complex, and structured
Through the continuous improvements from the formalisation of our winery and vineyard R & D programme, including organic, biodynamic and regenerative practices, new pruning techniques, greater experience with an intimate knowledge of our blocks down to the individual vine, increasing vine age, and attention to detail, all this coupled with such an incredible vintage the wines from 2024 are absolutely stellar.
Can we see The Holy Grail?
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