2024 Vintage Review

As we reflect on the 2024 vintage at Saffron Grange Vineyard and look ahead to 2025, we’re excited to share our notes on what has been a notably unique year here at Saffron Grange.

2024’s vintage was shaped by a mix of challenging weather conditions offset by the usual beauty of an English spring and summer, along with the rewards of working with such a strong team. The overarching theme though is of resilience in the face of adversity, culminating in a successful harvest that we’re really looking forward to tasting and sharing with you in due course.

The 2024 growing season presented us with a dynamic climate. The year began with the first signs of spring appearing as expected: aconites graced the landscape by the end of January, and the snowdrops emerged at the beginning of February. Thanks to our chalky soils, we were greeted by the first dandelions in the second week of March, coinciding with the sap starting to flow and the first flutter of butterflies.

Spring started a little damp and gradually got damper with budburst occurring slightly earlier than usual due to a wet and mild winter.  The 18 months to the end of March 2024 were the wettest on record for the country since 1836. Following on from 2023 that delivered a total of 695mm of rainfall, above our local average of 500mm.

Bud burst in the Pinot Meunier started in the first week of April, followed closely by the emergence of leaf tips mid-month – exciting indicators of what we hoped would be a fruitful season following the excellent flowering during 2023 which plays a big part in bud and inflorescence (bunches to be) development for the following year. Bud burst in the Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Seyval Blanc and Pinot Gris followed soon after.

In Spring, we witnessed the benefit of managing a diverse and balanced ecosystem here at Saffron Grange. We saw the decline of grapevine scale, a pest that enjoys feeding on the vine’s sap, thanks to the parasitic wasp which predates on them. A reminder on how important it is to ensure we continue to focus on providing the adequate habitat for insects to thrive.

However, the other side of nature showed its hand early on. A light frost of -0.7°C came the day after bud burst in the Pinot Meunier. Then after a series of minor frost scares, on the 25^th April, temperatures plummeted to -2.5°C. Despite the hard work and efforts of the vineyard team throughout the night, this resulted in significant frost damage across the vineyard. Although fortunately not as significant as initial assessments suggested. Our chardonnay, which usually buds first, was most affected with a 40% loss – vines have a secondary and tertiary bud to mitigate frost damage albeit these will always be less fruitful. The other varieties were less affected due to the pruning and training styles we employ.

Thanks to diligent monitoring, our team’s hard work and some well needed intervention including a helping hand of amino acids to facilitate the vine’s growth hormones to restart after shutting down from the frost – we survived another frost season.

Despite this setback, May was the warmest on record for the country and the vines here adapted remarkably. Although we experienced a delayed start, the first caps came off for flowering in late June. For the rest of the industry flowering started in the first two weeks of June. Seyval Blanc fruit set occurred mid-July, in line with the traditional saying that flowering occurs during Wimbledon. However, for the remainder of the varieties we were running behind schedule still and didn’t see fruit set until August, accompanied by the presence of blackberries and elderberries in our hedgerows. Pollination turned out to be challenging for the industry, exacerbated by rain that created difficult conditions. Due to our meso-climate (an area such as a vineyard rather than a microclimate being an area around a single vine or tree), we did not suffer too greatly, although some flower caps did get stuck. Our team once again thought outside the box and proactively employed the vineyard sprayer’s fan to gently blow them away, a creative idea to try and encourage successful pollination.

Yet, the tough conditions persisted, particularly in July, and August, which were marked by high Downy Mildew (fungal disease) pressure due to rainfall in early July. Although Downy Mildew can affect green tissue from shortly after bud burst, we experienced infection events on six separate days in July due to the sheer volume of rainfall. We witnessed 124mm of rain, crowning July as the month with the highest rainfall of the year, contributing to a total of 770mm for the year, making it another notably wet season. However, with good canopy management and the correct usage of fungicides we were able to stave off significant infection until 3 to 4 weeks after fruit set when the berries gain resistance.

Veraison (berry ripening) began in our Pinot Noir 828 clone, a Burgundian clone, at the end of August, just as the horse chestnut trees began to turn. The remainder of the industry also started late in mid-August, so our vines had caught up a little bit from the April frost. This was then followed by our Seyval Blanc, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay, and being bookended by our Test plot Pinot Noir at the beginning of September.

Not only was it a wet year, but it was also a relatively cool one for our region. The average temperature didn’t reach 20°C until 24^th June and lasted just three days. It only went above 30°C twice on the 30^th July and 12^th August where it peaked at 33.7°C in the vineyard just shy of the highest annual recorded temperature in the country in Cambridge at 34.8°C. Temperatures above 30°C are important for ripening Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. What we do benefit from greatly, in our region and on our site, is slightly warmer nights which help with maximising the sunlight’s daytime temperature and aiding photosynthesis to start as early as possible.

As we entered September, average temperatures dropped by 5 to 10°C during Veraison compounded by near-freezing nights and some minor hailstorms which were unusual for this time of year. Overall, though, for the month, temperatures across the UK were only just below the long-term average. The second half of September saw good average temperatures to help with ripening, but once again the 2024 vintage played its trump card and dropped 33mm of rain, the highest amount of the year on a single day, on the 26^th September.

The sun thankfully came out for our annual Mammoth Day Out and was one of the best days of the year.

For the first time in our history, we experienced a pre-harvest frost on 11^th October, plummeting to -2.5°C again! This resulted in a loss of the leaf canopy and exposed bunches of grapes. An apt conclusion to our tumultuous growing season. This led to many discussions around the timing of our harvest. Ultimately, we decided to hold out a little longer and commenced harvest of the Chardonnay on 19^th October, 10 days later than the 2023 vintage, finishing by the 27^th October with our Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. With the stellar and unwavering help of our local volunteers, in total, we harvested 24 tons, approximately 15% down on our average yield which, given the challenging season and the hurdles we overcame, we consider a great success.

Even with the canopy damage from the pre-harvest frost, by holding off starting harvest a little longer, sugars reached good levels along with a high level of phenolic ripeness and although acids were a little high and in particular malic acid, they were still good for sparkling wine and our wine maker was again surprised with the quality that we were able to produce from a challenging year.

The industry’s WineGB Harvest Report describes the 2024 vintage as a true “winegrowers’ vintage,” which we would certainly agree with, and the skills amassed by our team and the year’s unique challenges has helped the vineyard to become more resilient. 2024 will be remembered as having a wet start, being wet in the middle and having a wet finish before harvesting. Thankfully ‘love is all around us’ and being located in the driest region in the country, we did not suffer like a number of others did which we are extremely grateful for and validates what a great region that we are located in!

The industry saw 2024 provide the lowest number of GDDs (Growing Degree Days – a barometer of temperature and sunlight for ripening of grapes) of 911. Here at Saffron Grange, we had 975 with 2023 receiving 1,070 (the industry average for between 2018-2023 is 1,017).

As we transition from the vineyard to the winery, we are hopeful for the quality of the wines produced from this complex vintage. Our experiences in 2024 have reinforced our belief in the power of teamwork and adaptability in viticulture. Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we look forward to sharing the fruits of our labour with you in the coming months!