‘In common with much of northern Europe, we had a very wet winter – at Rathfinny, we had 470mm of rain from January to May – 88% above average. This slowed down our winter pruning, but it’s been mild – maybe due to El Niño, which typically brings warmer, more humid air across the North Atlantic – so we had our third earliest budburst on record. We’re lucky in that because the estate is only three miles from the sea, we don’t suffer from last spring frosts, so the vines are in good shape, growth is ahead of 2023 and is fairly consistent across the vineyard, on all varieties and clones. 

‘There’s always something going on in the vineyard, and many of the tasks are done by hand. We’ve just started wire lifting, for example. The new growth needs supporting with foliage wires that are lifted to hold the new growth in the trellis, to prevent the canes from tumbling into the rows. At the same time, we’re removing water shoots from the trunks and removing excess shoots from the heads of each vine. It’s a laborious job but we have a great, experienced crew – our core casual team all live within 12 miles of Rathfinny and work with us for 6-8 months a year.   

‘We have 14 different clones of Pinot Noir, seven different Chardonnay clones and four clones of Meunier planted across our vineyard. They’re all on the one site, but we pick and ferment these different clones and plots separately. This produces about 36-40 quite distinct base wines, which enables us to produce some very distinct cuvées. We’ve just finished blending the base wines into our 2023 vintages which will be going into bottle over the next two months, then into the cellar for between three and five years. We’ll be bottling more of the 2023 vintage in our new, smaller 50cl bottle, as the Rathfinny Mini Cuvée. We tested the format in various hotels and independent retail with the 2020 vintage, and the reaction has been really positive – we think it’s the perfect size for two people to share, and we hope more producers will follow suit.’