Wine is the most human drink - joyful, moody & slightly unhinged

Winemakers are like Goldilocks…always looking for the porridge, the chair, the bed that is “just right”.

Too often in winemaking, the porridge is either too hot (we make too much wine) or too cold (we don’t make enough). It’s a rare year when we get it just right, and one vintage of wine supplies flows seamlessly into the release of the next.

This week, in between cleaning picking bins and getting the winery ready for our first pick of the 2026 vintage, we’ve been crystal ball gazing – wondering how much wine to make to hit that sweet spot.

Our Blanc de Blancs Méthode Traditionnelle, which we’ll harvest this weekend, is a prime example. It has a four-year period between picking and eventual release. Who the hell knows what the world will look like in four years? Will people still like fizz? Still like us? Should we maybe make a little more, or a little less?

To make wine is to be an optimist - each year is another chance, because as optimists we believe our best wines are still ahead of us. To make wine for a long time is to be a pragmatist, because each year we have to work with what nature gives us.

No vintage is quite like the one before - they are all fleeting and fragile and filled with hundreds of little decisions made in the vineyard and winery that add up to the final wine we present to the world.

These weeks of harvest are like a little lifetime, with wine as the long-term love interest/relationship. It’s the most human of all the drinks. Why? Because it’s joyful and moody and inconsistent and slightly unhinged. If that’s not human, I don’t know what is…

But here we are again, turning up like Goldilocks, excited for another vintage, in search of the wine that is “just right.”

See you on the other side.

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