Bottling our 2025 wines
Jeremy Mount, Winemaker
Some of you may have noticed via our social media channels that a couple of weeks ago we bottled, labelled and boxed our still wines from last year’s harvest.
We bottled just under 42 thousand bottles and 7 different wines. We were lucky to have an excellent harvest last year producing top quality wines that we are looking forward to sharing with you.
The build up to bottling is a busy time. Firstly, getting the wines blended, checking and achieving protein and tartaric stability, then filtering. With that also comes ensuring all the information on the labels has been updated for the year and printed in time! Then we have the logistical challenge of making sure the bottles and boxes are delivered in the appropriate quantities. Finally, the day before bottling starts it is always a worry that the extremely large truck that delivers the bottling line makes it up the hill safely.
Bottling is always an eventful week, and, given the time of year, the weather is usually challenging. A good example was the bottling at the start of 2019 for the 2018 vintage when we bottled and labelled during the winter storm nicknamed the ‘beast from the east’. This year was actually fine with only one day of rain.
The wines produced this year include our core range of Bacchus, Culver Hill and Pinot Rosé. I think the Sauvignon Blanc is particularly interesting and we have a repeat production of the extremely popular Tenterhook. We didn’t produce any red wine in 2024. However, some very promising Pinot Noir from the 2025 harvest is currently aging very nicely in some exceptionally good new barrels (the same used by some top domains in Burgundy!) and will remain there for another 10 months to then be bottled in April next year.
Other very interesting still wines from the last harvest include a small amount of Chardonnay that is currently developing nicely in barrel, to be released sometime in the future There is also a small allocation of some very good Bacchus, partially fermented in barrels which will be a very limited release celebrating 10 years of Woodchester being a Single Estate producer.
