Harvest days 2022 

Harvest days at Wayfarer fell on the 3rd and 6th of October this year, a mix of palpable excitement and anxiety lingers in the air at this time of year for all of us, and with 2022 being one of the driest, hottest years we’ve seen since our first harvest in 2019, our expectations were set high for a great vintage.

One of the things we love about harvest is the romantic notion of people in the family and local community coming together to bring in the years fruit. Its the teamwork, the shared pauses with cups of tea and homemade cake and of course, a harvest lunch sat together overlooking the beautiful scenery of the vineyard and north downs that inspire our labels.

The grapes cut and placed into crates, then carefully carried up the vineyard to the Pilgrims Way to be loaded for transportation to the winery in Canterbury, with a vanguard of team Wayfarer to ensure their safe delivery. We all breathe a sigh of relief and feel rejuvenated as we finish this vintage of growing, and turn our thoughts (yes already!) to 2023 with our pruning season beginning shortly on the 1st December. For now, the team can rest a little while we continue to run our tours and tastings at Highfield Estate, Woodchurch.

The 2022 growing season 

Matt Ashford, our vineyard manager, gives some insight to the growing season “We did see some heat stress in the vineyard, particularly with our young vines at Highfield Estate which are still establishing their roots”. The vines at Highfield estate are only in their second year, so we wouldn’t expect to be taking a harvest this year. “For another year our focus will be continuing to encourage deep roots, healthy growth and a neat trellis system”. It was a different story at Pilgrims Way Estate though, Matt explains “the well established vines there have access to water deep beneath the surface. The grape quality was impeccable and disease free, which is so important when creating top quality single varietal, single vintage still wines”.

In the winery

Our winery team at Defined wine have been hard at work pressing the grapes, transferring the juice to tank and inoculating with yeast to begin the fermentation process. There is a heavy emphasis on letting the fruit do the talking with the aim of creating similar fruit driven styles to previous vintages. With each new vintage there are subtle variations which we embrace, and the wines are already showing great character and fruit profiles. We will now be working closely with the winery to ensure we get the best from the fruit, although it will be a few months yet before we will release 2022 vintage in spring of next year. We cant wait to share it with you.