The art of wine tasting: Tips for beginners

Last month, we told you all about our plans and hopes for harvest at Three Choirs Vineyard. Now, a few weeks on, we can tell you all about how successful it was. Harvest 2025 was the earliest harvest on record for us, after a very dry and consistently warm summer. We started picking two weeks earlier than usual and will finish picking three weeks earlier, at the start of October. Some years, when we’ve had a very late harvest, it has lasted almost until December. But this year has been a fast and furious harvest! We’ve had a bit of rain during September. This can prove problematic during harvest, but we’re pleased to say it was nothing disruptive this year. In fact, the weather has stayed perfect through to the end of September, to keep the grapes in good condition. The positive news is that it wasn’t just an early harvest – it was a good one, with very high quality grapes. The 2025 wines which will start to come out in the middle of next year should reflect that. 

As August draws to an end, the team at Three Choirs Vineyard are gearing up ready for our harvest. But when is the right time to pick the grapes? We don’t have a definite set date for the annual harvest; it all depends on the weather. This year, it looks likely to start a bit early – probably in the first week of September - because of all the good weather we’ve had this summer. That is about 10 days to two weeks earlier than usual. As the climate is changing, the trend is towards picking earlier than we used to. But the harvest still takes the same amount of time. Generally, we would expect the harvest to last for about 10 weeks, but this will depend on what the weather is like and the quantity and quality of grapes on our vines. Here at Three Choirs, we have 14 different varieties of grapes, and they all ripen at slightly different times. The first grape we will pick is Siegerrebe, which is a pinky orange colour when ripe. Siegerrebe makes a white wine, because, as with most grapes, all the colour is in the skin and not the juice inside. Siegerrebe takes 76 days from flowering until the fruit is ready to pick. The timing really is as specific as that! All of the grape varieties have precise timings, although some of them are longer than others. Thomas Shaw, managing director, said: “It’s been a good year, with lots of sunshine. The grapes are fairly small, but that means they should have a nice concentration of flavours and sugars, which is what we need. We don’t need big fat grapes like you get in the supermarket, because they’re full of water.” It hasn’t just been a warm, sunny year, it has been a very dry one too. Will that affect our harvest? Thomas continued: “There was a lot of moisture in the ground early in the year. The roots of our vines go down 12 to 15 foot, so there is still enough moisture down there for them. “Grapes are different from other crops. Some farmers have been struggling this year because their crops have very small roots, and the ground is far too dry for them.” Picking is all done by hand. Fruit is picked and pressed on the same day. Thomas said: “To maximise the quality, we don’t pick when it’s rainy. If it’s raining, we can get a lot of wet fruit into the winery, which dilutes the wine.” So here’s hoping for a dry harvest! Early indications are that 2025 will be a successful year for grapes at Three Choirs. Flowering in late June and early July is a key time for our harvest, and the weather was just what we needed at that time. September and October will be the final decider if 2025 is a good quality year for our wines.

Three Choirs Vineyards was recently featured in the national media. Not only was it named in the feature 11 of the best vineyard stays in the UK in The Times online, it also had an entire feature devoted to it in the Express online and appeared in the world’s longest running women’s magazine. The People’s Friend is a weekly magazine full of lifestyle, cooking and gardening features, along with short stories and fiction serials. Ahead of English Wine Week (21st to 29th June), we were featured in an article highlighting three UK vineyards – Aldwick Estate in Bristol, Chet Valley Vineyard in Norfolk and, of course, Three Choirs Vineyards, right here in Gloucestershire. The article said there are more than 1,000 vineyards in the UK and that winemaking is one of the fastest growing sectors of agriculture. We’re pleased to say that The People’s Friend said Three Choirs is a ‘top-drawer example’ of an English vineyard, producing around 250,000 bottles a year. The article quotes our managing director, Thomas Shaw, who said: “Three Choirs Vineyard’s focus is the quality of the wines and the visitor experience.” He added: “As the climate changes, more and more varieties can be grown in the UK.” The article shared that most of our wine is sold direct to customers online, to wine merchants or consumed by guests at our brasserie at the vineyard, with a small number of bottles sold to Waitrose. The People’s Friend chose one favourite wine from each of the three producers featured. Its choice from Three Choirs was the Coleridge Hill 2023 – a dry white wine produced from Madeleine Angevine and Phoenix grapes. The magazine said: “With its fresh fruity aromas, especially apple, it’s zesty on the palate thanks to the ripe fruit flavours, and offers a long, crisp finish.”

Martin Fowke is Three Choirs Vineyard’s winemaker. Now aged 62, he has been with us for over 40 years, having joined in 1984. He studied agriculture and horticulture at the Royal Agricultural College (now Royal Agricultural University) in Cirencester and went to Three Choirs for some work experience. Martin said he ‘fell into’ the industry. He met a girl, who he has now been happily married to for many years. Her father ran an apple and blackcurrant farm and planted a vineyard in 1973. Three Choirs Vineyard was born… He joined when the company was in its infancy and worked his way up quickly. Martin joked: “I was the only one who knew how to use a computer!” He left Three Choirs briefly in the 1980s to go travelling. On his travels, he went to the wine making regions of Australia, New Zealand and California and picked up some tips along the way. On his return to Gloucestershire in 1989, Martin took over the winemaking side of the business. Martin said: “I wasn’t officially trained, there wasn’t the training that is available to young people these days. I worked with my father in law and learned on the job. I had some very good teachers.” Our winemaker loves his job and says he has never looked back since those early days. English winemaking can be more challenging than in other parts of the world, but Martin’s experience means he’s seen it all before and can adapt and change as needed. He said: “Compared to the rest of the world, the English climate is traditionally less reliable. We have different challenges every year, which gives us the opportunity to do different things every year, and the grapes allow us to make lots of different wines. “Now England is considered a bona fide wine producing country. Climate change means we get more consistency with the weather and therefore the grapes and the wine. “Compared to the rest of the England, Three Choirs Vineyard has mild weather, with protection from the Welsh mountains, Cotswold hills and Malvern hills. We get good sunlight and relatively low rainfall. It’s ideal for vines!” Being a relatively small vineyard, Martin enjoys the opportunity to experiment, alongside producing the high quality wines our customers love. “We have a responsibility to produce consistent wines, but the beauty of what we do here is I also have the latitude to be able to experiment. We’re always trying new things and different things. “Our latest success is an orange wine. This is produced in different parts of the world, but not in England. “We’re always looking to change and develop. People’s tastes don’t stay still, and the market doesn’t stay still, so we’re always evolving.” Of all the wines we produce, does Martin have a favourite? “They’re like children – it’s impossible to choose just one! I’m proud of most of them. The newer wines that come on are always interesting. But the ones I hang my hat on are Bacchus and Siegerrebe.” After more than 40 years of winemaking in the Gloucestershire countryside, is Martin ready to move on? “I’ve got a very good team here, who make my life easier. We’ve got a good succession in place, but I don’t plan on retiring any time soon!”

Harvesting our grapes here at Three Choirs Vineyard takes place in autumn. But thinking about the harvest starts around the middle of summer