The Sussex Wine Harvest 2024
“Without question the hardest year I have experienced since I started viticulture” Luke Spalding, Everflyht (Ditchling, East Sussex)
If you’re feeling a bit miffed at the relatively few beach days recently, at the late-Summer sunshine that largely failed to arrive, then you’re in good company. As Luke’s words ring in my ears, I thought I’d get the inside scoop on what has been a somewhat challenging harvest for our local Sussex wineries.
It’s been quite cold, it’s been wet, it’s been a bit ‘meh’ out there. Throughout Summer, I have been chatting with winemakers and viticulturalists (vineyard managers) who have repeated the mantra “we need the sun to come out” for months… and it didn’t really. The result is a late harvest (some are only really wrapping up now as we head towards November!), relatively limited quantities of good-enough-quality fruit to fill pickers’ baskets and ultimately, a smaller quantity of wine to be made.
But, it’s far from all doom-and-gloom. What is being picked is often decent – there are some shining stars appearing even at this earliest stage. Also, being a mainly sparkling wine producing country, this small vintage will be sold in many many years to come, giving winemakers time to adjust sales forecasts and budgets to fit. And don’t forget, we’re straight off the back of England’s largest-ever harvest, a record-breaking 2023 producing an estimated 20-22 million bottles (up from a more typical approx.12 million in 2022)… so stock reserves are high. Here’s the word on the street (well, muddy vineyard row)…
How late a harvest?
With harvests typically creeping earlier and earlier as we warm up, English wineries often start harvesting in mid-late September. A decade ago, early October was more common as the start of harvest. This year, while some early-ripening varieties did get picked in small quantities in late September (often from slightly sunnier sites further East, and those in Kent, Essex or Norfolk) harvest really began, proper, well into October. Sussex winery Artelium began harvest at its Sussex vineyards on Tuesday 7th October and both Everflyht and Ridgeview nearby began on 14th October.
Is the fruit any good?
While there have been various challenges set by the weather, the key factors for many have been low ripeness (due to low levels of sunshine) and warding off damage from mildew and other fungal diseases that this damp, humid, cool weather brings. It’s in years like this that experience pays off, as Artelium’s Hannah Simpson-Banks tells us. “We’re incredibly grateful to have our vineyard manager, Sue, at the helm. With decades of English viticultural experience, Sue’s seen seasons like this before, so we’ve been in good hands! The fluctuating weather conditions created the perfect storm for disease pressure, and it’s been a season of constant vigilance in the vineyard.”
Ridgeview add “The fruit isn’t as ripe as in previous years, so we anticipate fresh, complex wines where we carefully manage acidity, with great ageing potential. However, it’s still too early to tell for certain”
Bringing this early information together, I’m taking the read that the year’s harvest will produce a small number of interesting still wines, likely on the more lean, fresh, mineral end of the spectrum, even by English standards. Mostly though, the fruit will be used to produce fresh, vibrant, electrically tense English sparkling wines which, given 3-5 years ageing in the cellar, will be delicious at a party circa 2030. Many of which will be blended with previous years’ ‘reserve’ wines to balance out a lot of the lean character – that’s the point, and opportunity, with non-vintage sparkling wines, as the producers in Champagne have known for centuries…
Any stars of the vintage to look out for?
It is a Pinot Noir and Meunier year for sparkling wines, according to Luke’s early predictions “Our house block Meunier and Oaks block Pinot Noir once again are showing some beautiful phenolics (aroma, flavour) and character in the juice samples we have collected so far.”
Artelium reported excitement (and some surprise!) at the quality of the first-picked Pinot Gris for still whites, also highlighting Pinot Noir as a variety to keep your eye on for sparkling from this vintage. As well as Cabaret Noir – a new disease-resistant black ‘Piwi’ variety they are trialling. As Hannah Simpson-Banks from Artelium tells me, “Our winemaking team is especially excited about the Cabaret Noir this year, particularly for still wine production. It’s only our second year working with Piwis, we’re thrilled with the unique characteristics they’re able to bring to the table, even in years like this. These varieties offer real resilience in the vineyard. Some parcels of Pinot Noir have also shown early signs of elegance and purity, displaying beautifully defined fruit.”
So what to do now?
So, not an easy one. But, good things rarely are… let’s keep an eye out for the gems of the 2024 vintage on restaurant wine lists and at winery cellar doors in years to come. Right now, keep tucking into the wines available today – Sussex is at the centre of a world wine revolution. Let’s all do our bit and share a bottle whenever possible!
Matt Strugnell at Ridgeview sums it up beautifully. “This season has been a reminder that we grow grapes in a marginal climate; it will always present us with challenges, but personally, I think this is what makes our wines more exciting and interesting; growing these varieties on the limit” Cheers to that, Matt!
Got you in the mood for Sussex wines? Tom recommends the below for immediate enjoyment.
Artelium – Artefact #7 ‘Motley Wild’ 2023 £30
English still as you’ve never had before. My favourite English still wine from 2023 so far. Fresh, bright, citrus and stone fruits but with a rich, gently citrus-peel-oils texture. Epic. Wild fermented and an outrageously out-there blend of Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier grown a stone’s throw from Brighton.
Artefact #7 – Motley Wild — Artelium Wine Estate
Everflyht – NV Brut £28
About the best value sparkling in the UK at the moment and joyfully grown five minutes north of Brighton. A blend based on 2020’s rich, ripe fruit, alongside fruit from 2018 and 19. Mainly Chardonnay, with Pinot Noir and Meunier making up 40% combined. Creamy, rich texture, fresh energy – great sparkling wine. A regular at Casa Surgey.
English Vineyard shop selling sparkling wine in SussexEverflyht
Ridgeview – Oak Reserve £85
A proper ‘treat’ bottle. Maybe something for Christmas? Ridgeview’s Blanc de Blancs (100% Chardonnay) has always been off-the-charts good. Maybe their best wine… hard call. The Oak Reserve takes that Chardonnay, adds extra ageing in bottle, but crucially this one is fermented in Burgundian and Loire oak barrels. Super complex, buttery, still high-energy stuff.
Here’s an extract from Tom’s new book How To Drink Wine | Tom Surgey
Terroir (pronounced tair-wah) is a big name on campus. It’s the central concept in wine, really. Often described gleefully by wine experts to the perceived uninitiated as: ‘A very complex thing, made up of myriad slight nuances. It isn’t. It’s incredibly easy. Terroir means: ‘It tastes like where it comes from. It has a sense of place.’
One of wine’s greatest attributes is its ability to hold unique flavours and aromas that have developed over a long season on the vine. The vine itself doesn’t move, so year by year, at harvest, its fruit reflects the unique local climate it was exposed to. If it was particularly hot, the fruit will be sweeter; colder, more acidic and less ripe. The resulting wines will follow suit.
The word terroir can be used liberally to describe a particular bottle of wine’s sense of place – ‘Cor, Jeremy. This is SUCH a terroir wine’ – or as a catch-all term for the local environment –‘Let’s hop over that vineyard wall and have a butcher’s at the terroir, eh?’ Terroir could be used to describe a relatively large region – an English county’s wines, for example – but not much larger than that. Certainly not a whole country’s wines. But it can be used to describe areas as small as single vineyard rows. Burgundy is the spiritual home of terroir and is the poster child for tiny plots of land with demonstrably distinct terroirs. The arbiter of whether a particular plot of land – whatever the size – has a distinct terroir will be whether consistent recurring characteristics are found in the wines, year-in-year-out. It will usually have some defining geological, geographical or cultural characteristics to it that set it apart from its neighbouring plots.
On an individual level, gaining a good perception of the particular terroir of a place – one where you can confidently taste a wine and say, ‘This is unusually ripe and rich for a Marsannay’ – comes from tasting a wide range of wines from that particular region over a number of years. It also involves remembering roughly what they tasted like. Do this enough and you’ll form a perception of ‘the norm’ and appreciate wines that step outside of it. Each wine you try, bear in mind, will shift the norm or the average a little in your mind; so, the ‘typical’ terroir of a place is in a constant state of evolution.
A diverse array of factors affects the terroir of a particular place. Some people consider terroir to be solely an environmental thing; the sum of the unique natural environment in which the vine sits. They feel any human intervention, and certainly anything beyond a gentle press of the grapes and a natural fermentation in the winery, is adding character; either masking the terroir in the wine, or adding something harmonious, but ultimately not truly terroir; and so inferior. I get their point, and I agree environmental factors are the backbone of terroir – in many cases the natural environment is almost the whole picture. But I also feel that the human element, the local tradition and its influence, has a valid contribution to make, too.
Make up your own mind – let your opinion evolve. Whatever you decide ‘terroir’ is, I think it’s helpful to understand, broadly, what each of the various elements brings to the final experience. With this knowledge, you can anticipate the character of a wine from any region before you decide to purchase and crack open the bottle.
Learn more in How To Drink Wine | Tom Surgey available now.
‘Tom is one of my favourite people to taste wine with’ – Oz Clarke