Harvest and Hampers

It was the biggest undertaking of the year, with challenges along the way, but after a year of hard work in the vineyard and thanks to our amazing team of pickers, we have now successfully brought in our grapes for this year – harvest 2021 is complete!  

Hello once again friends. We’re back with another update for you on life and times on our busy Eridge vineyard, so make yourself comfortable, it’s fika time.

Talking of pickers, pictured here is our smiling Meunier team, led professionally by supervisor Daniel, but made up of local people recruited from social media – and they were really excellent.

To give you a very quick overview of the vineyard year, it was a tricky vintage across Northern Europe, with early spring frosts making us grateful for our frost protection machine safeguarding our young buds. There then followed damp, cold nights during the summer season. Because of these factors we picked a little later than usual to allow the grapes extra time to ripen.

And we got there – we have ended up in a good place, with fruit we are really happy with. The headline is that the quality of grapes is very good so we will be able to produce excellent wine again. Phew!

We’re so pleased to tell you about these beautiful little vegan hampers put together by Harvey Nicholls. They chose our Rosé 2018 as the wine in their wonderfully presented Vegan Rosé Sparkling Wine and Chocolate Selection. Here is a link to their store, these are only just available this week. Be quick!

Since our last update we’ve also celebrated news of another wine competition medal. This time it’s silver for our Brut 2018 from the respected Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championships. Thank you to the judges! It’s tasting so well right now, so it’s a perfect time to try this delicious fizz, and to stock up for the festive season…

We are excited that on Saturday (13th November) we will be hosting our exclusive winter tasting of our sparkling wines.

Come and meet us and enjoy a cosy seasonal tasting of both of our wines, with perfectly paired canapés prepared by Camilla Stanton, chef at the Michelin starred Gravetye Manor in East Grinstead.

A small number of places are still available for this, so if it sounds good to you, head over to Eventbrite to secure the last tickets…

Our final food thought this time? Cheese. Did you know that English sparkling is a great match for a range of cheeses? Of course you did. But which cheese to go for when there are so many styles out there? Well, help is at hand: On Sunday 28th November Andy Clarke will be on ITV’s Alan Titchmarsh show pairing a range of wines and cheeses, and our Brut 2018 will be among them. We’re excited to see what Andy goes for!

Right, that is all from us for now. Stay well, and see you next time. And we’ll see some of you on Saturday!

Until then…

Skål!    Susanna & Douglas
Busi Jacobsohn Wine Estate