Frost damage and crop loss.

This weekend reminded us just how fragile all of this is, and the reality of making wine in the UK.

Despite forecasts showing temperatures around 2 to 3 degrees, we were hit by a ground frost. Upon inspection of the vines, we are looking at a loss of around 40 to 50 percent of this year’s crop. Before the season has even really begun, half of it is just gone. Sadly, our walled garden was the worst affected, with almost 100% losses, including all of our trial block with young vines of newly developed varieties, where we experiment with the future of English Wine.

This was not the kind of frost most people expect. Air temperatures never dropped below zero, so nothing looked especially risky on paper. But ground frost works differently. On still, clear nights, heat escapes from the soil faster than the air above it, meaning the surface temperature can fall below freezing even when the air does not. That is exactly what happened here.

Because it has also been very dry, there was no obvious frost or ice on the vines. The damage only became clear a day or two later, once the young shoots started to fail.

At first glance, everything still looks normal. The vineyard is still there. The rows are still there. But look closer, and you start to see it. Those early shoots, which should be full of life at this stage, have been damaged beyond recovery. In simple terms, what is lost now is lost for the year.

The vine will try to compensate by pushing new growth, but these secondary shoots tend to carry fewer grapes. So while the vineyard will continue to grow, the overall yield is significantly reduced. A slight silver lining here is that in 2020, the last time we lost around 40% of vines to frost, the grapes that did grow were fantastic quality. 

Across our vineyards, the impact varies, but on average we are expecting around a 40 to 50 percent loss. As mentioned, the walled garden has been hit particularly hard, especially younger vines, while others have come through slightly better. That variation is typical in frost events, but the overall picture is clear. This is a significant setback.

It is a strange feeling. Because nothing looks dramatic from a distance, but up close the potential has gone. And it is a bit like life, really. Sometimes you put everything into something, and things still do not go your way. Events completely out of your control leave their mark.

But you do not stop.

You take a breath, you take stock of what is still there, and you keep going.

The good news is that this does not mean there will be a shortage of wine. We have had strong harvests over the past few years, and our cellar is well stocked. This is exactly why we make decisions around reserve wines and blending across vintages. It gives us some stability in years like this, and allows us to keep doing what we do.

That said, there is still a financial impact. The work in the vineyard does not change. If anything, it increases. But with fewer grapes to harvest, the cost per tonne rises, and the financial pressure is real. That is the reality of any sort of farming.

We are also not out of the woods yet. Another frost event could make things even more difficult, so for now we are watching the forecast closely and doing what we can to protect what remains.

You may have seen vineyards using candles or large fans to protect against frost. These systems can be effective, but they come at a huge cost and only protect limited areas. For a vineyard like ours, spread across multiple sites, they are not a viable solution without significantly increasing the price of our wines. It is a balance, and like many growers in the UK, we accept a level of risk in order to keep what we do accessible. Mostly, for us it’s a sustainability issue. You need to burn thousands of oil burning candles, or have huge fans blowing constantly. That’s just not for us.

Wine is not just a product. It is a year of work, of risk, of uncertainty, and sometimes setbacks like this.

But we are still here. We have a vineyard, a team that cares, and a community around us that supports what we do. So we focus on what is left, and we keep going.