Winefeed

Surrey funds 17 rural projects, including a vineyard bird-repelling laser

• Surrey County Council's Farming Innovation Accelerator funds 17 rural and farming projects from a £500,000 pot.
• Each recipient gets a grant of up to £35,000 plus expert business support, drawn from UK government Shared Prosperity Funding.
• Albury Vineyard will install an automated bird-repellent laser to protect 18 acres of grapevines, adding over 1,700 bottles a year.

Navarra turns demanding rosé methods into a premium story; English wine could too

• Navarra rosado uses the Saignée method, needing up to three times more grapes than standard red production.
• The region's new Rosado Tradition designation requires Saignée and exclusive use of Garnacha.

Australian wine exports fall 7% to $2.25 billion as Canada and Thailand grow

• Australian wine exports fell 7% in value to $2.25 billion, and 5% in volume to 590 million litres, in the year to September 2026.
• Exports to the US dropped 28% in value to $219 million and 22% in volume, the largest driver of the decline.
• Canada grew 12% in value to $185 million, helped by American wines being pulled from shelves in the Canada-US trade dispute.

Bordeaux holds 39.6% of traded wine value, led by Lafite 2005

• Bordeaux claimed 39.6% of traded value on the Liv-ex wine market, with Lafite the region's top-traded wine.
• Burgundy fell to 18.4% of traded value from 24.8% last week, while Tuscany rose from 5.2% to 8.9%.
• Bollinger overtook Dom Perignon and Louis Roeder as the top-traded Champagne producer by value.

VinePair's weekly roundup covers Supreme Court case, Uncle Nearest sale, new releases

• Supreme Court will review a home distilling case, according to VinePair's weekly roundup.
• Fawn Weaver moved to block a sale of Uncle Nearest, per the roundup's headline.
• Southern Glazer's faces a bribery snafu, and OpenTable released a 2026 restaurant report.

Real Housewives shows reveal the sweet, mass-market wines their cast favours

• Writer Cake Zine's essay argues Real Housewives cast members mostly drink mass-market, sweet, high-alcohol California cabernet.
• Justin Cabernet Sauvignon, sold at Walgreens for about $22, appears in Salt Lake City season four.
• The writer links the sweet style to Robert Parker's 100-point scoring, which encouraged Parkerization of wine flavour.

Kathleen Burk's 600-page Wine: A Global History spans Georgia to modern China

• Kathleen Burk, emerita history professor at University College London, has published Wine: A Global History, almost 600 pages, with Basic Books in 2026.
• The book opens in Georgia, covers Greece, Rome, Venetian, Genoese and Dutch trade, and gives Islam and wine a dedicated chapter.
• France and the United States get two chapters each, Italy and Spain share one, and Germany has no chapter of its own.

UK vineyards face early, hot, dry 2026 harvest after frost-hit start

• The 2026 English and Welsh growing season began with severe frost, then turned warm, dry and fast-ripening.
• Harvest arrived several weeks early at some vineyards, with dry weather keeping disease pressure low and fruit healthy.
• Growers are told to build resilience year after year through soil health, water management and monitoring rather than relying on typical seasons.

Domaine Bousquet details organic and water-saving practices at Mendoza winery

• SWR Membership Manager Ilva Fridenberga visited Domaine Bousquet, a winery at the foot of the Andes in Mendoza, in February.
• The winery is trialing biodiversity and garden vineyard corridors, with harvest performed from outside the vine rows.
• The team switched to high-pressure hoses to clean harvest boxes, using significantly less water, and is a signatory of the Bottle Weight Accord.

MODIS satellite data validated for mapping vineyard water use in Italy

• Researchers at the University of Padova used MODIS satellite data to estimate evapotranspiration across a 25-hectare vineyard in North-Eastern Italy.
• Estimates were calibrated on two years of data and validated against four years of eddy-covariance measurements from a monitoring tower.
• Results showed good consistency with in situ observations, suggesting MODIS could monitor vineyard water use at regional scale.

Newick Wine Estate in East Sussex battles frost and pests in its young vineyard

• Owners Jonathan and Charlotte Sharpe planted 37,000 vines on half of their 16-hectare East Sussex farm in 2023.
• Ten frost events in 2026, four causing significant damage, cut the estate to a small harvest, with the last on 10 May.
• Spotted wing drosophila (SWD) pressure in 2025 led to an earlier harvest, and the GM20 Pinot Noir clone was untouched by it.

Portuguese trial finds ethephon and manual thinning cut Vinhos Verdes yields

• A 2007 experiment in two Vinhos Verdes vineyards tested yield control on Loureiro and Borraçal vines.
• Manual bunch thinning cut Borraçal yield about 41% and Loureiro yield about 26% against control.
• Ethephon sprayed at berry buckshot size lifted Loureiro sugar and lowered acidity; Borraçal gained no quality.

Grenache rootstocks and irrigation shape water use and stomatal control in NE Spain

• A three-year NE Spain trial grafted Grenache onto 110-R, 41-B and 161-49C rootstocks, irrigated or non-irrigated.
• Water use efficiency was higher in non-irrigated vines and in 110-R and 41-B than in 161-49C.
• Stomatal conductance differences from irrigation persisted all season, and in non-irrigated vines leaf water potential tracked stomatal conductance.

Italian research on vine genetics, water use and rootstocks for future viticulture

• Researchers at the University of Pisa examined climate change, water scarcity and genetic diversity as threats to future viticulture.
• A safeguard project in several Italian regions aims to recover abandoned local grapevine varieties to preserve biodiversity.
• The paper reports viticultural and economic trials on Malvasia of Lazio, Cesanese d'Affile and Cabernet Sauvignon using the Cordon Spur of Conegliano system.

Conegliano pruning trials on Lazio grape varieties aim to raise saleable product value

• Researchers at Italy's CRA Viticulture centre in Conegliano tested Cordon Spur of Conegliano training on Lazio varieties and Cabernet Sauvignon.
• They compared Vertical Tridimensional Minimal Pruning with and without a DMRC double-maturation method, aiming to raise gross saleable product.

Winter vineyard tools for pruning, soil repair and frost protection

• Winter vineyard work includes pruning and soil care, which growers can make less costly with specialised tools.
• Zanon cordless battery secateurs are increasingly popular for hand pruning, speeding up the task.
• Provitis tractor-mounted pre-pruner and mechanical sweepers cut pruning time and let a flail mower mulch canes.

English and Welsh 2026 harvest comes early, with ripe fruit but frost-cut volumes

• Gusbourne in Kent began picking Pinot Noir on 26 August 2026, two weeks ahead of 2025.
• Nyetimber in West Sussex began its earliest ever harvest on 14 September, five days ahead of the 2018 record.
• Spring frosts killed emerging shoots at some estates, including The Grange in Hampshire, cutting yields while fruit quality stayed high.

Vine balance explained: growth versus fruiting across the season

• Vine balance is the appropriate ratio of vegetative growth to reproductive growth in a grapevine.
• A balanced vine ripens its crop, sets fruitful buds for next year, and builds reserves.
• A dynamic carbohydrate model can track seasonal growth needs against canopy carbon supply.

Vinography Unboxed: Week of 10/18/26

Hello and welcome to my weekly dig through the pile of wine samples that show up on my doorstep, asking

Three wines from a new producer in Oxfordshire (UK): Yew Tree Vineyard

• Yew Tree is a 5-hectare South Oxfordshire vineyard on greensand soils, planted in 2015 and 2020, that previously sold its grapes.
• Yew Tree's first own-label vintage is 2025, made and bottled at contract winery Defined Wines and priced at £19 direct to consumer.
• The 2025 Yew Tree Bacchus scored 90/100, the Rosé (Pinot Noir and Pinot Precoce) 89/100, and the Ortega 88/100.

Owendee

• Writer Meg Maker links the October, December wine peak to the Northern Hemisphere harvest and the season's holidays, from Halloween and Thanksgiving to New Year's.

Visiting the Vineyard in the Sky

• Marion Granges-Faiss and her late husband Jacky have farmed Domaine de Beudon, at 890 metres in Valais, Switzerland, for over 50 years.
• Jacky died in June 2016, crushed by a caterpillar tractor he was using in the vineyards; he was 70.
• Domaine de Beudon became Valais's first Demeter-certified estate in 1992, and its wines are fermented on the mountain but aged and bottled at Pierre-Antoine Crettenand's winery in Saillon.

Nasty Not Nice

• Tim Atkin argues wine's decline in drinking stems from it being too pleasant, risk-free and helpful, and suggests the trade adopt insecurity-fostering tactics.
• He proposes bottling each barrel separately and running Bordeaux en primeur sales like Smithfield's Christmas Eve meat sale.
• Atkin notes cork taint once made wine opening a thrilling risk, which he says has now been largely eliminated.

Inside Chinon’s Lieux-Dits Project

• Chinon's Syndicat launched a collective project in 2014 to promote the appellation's lieux-dits without a formal classification.
• Seven lieux-dits have been officially recognized so far, starting with La Croix Boissée in Cravant-les-Côteaux in 2018.
• Each recognized lieu-dit gets a historical and terroir monograph and an engraved stone marker in the vineyard, with more candidates expected next year.

Yet Another Vintage Port Flex Post (Tasting Selections From 1985 - 2022)

• 1WineDude published reviews from an NYC media tasting of selections from the 2024 Port vintage.
• A follow-up post covers older vintage Ports tasted at the same event, spanning 1985 to 2022.

Why Michelin Ratings Still Won’t Tell You Who Actually Made Your Burgundy Wine

• Since July, a growing number of Burgundy bottles have carried a Michelin rating of one to three grapes, assessed against five criteria.
• It cites Julien Cruchandeau's old-vine Bouzeron Aligoté, descended from Aubert de Villaine's selections, as an example of the story a score misses.

Telling a mountain to move

• DO Montsant has revised its bylaws to add certification for "vi brisat" wines, similar to orange wines, following DO Terra Alta's move in 2022.
• Montsant's revised bylaws include a "minimal intervention" natural wine classification requiring hand-harvesting, organic certification, spontaneous fermentation, and no additives except gentle filtration.
• The author says the maximum sulfur dioxide limit under the natural classification is not stated in the final bylaws, and the DO had not responded to his request for the figure.

400 Montepulciano Bottles for Thomas Jefferson circa 1805

• A 1350 trade contract between the Del Pecora family and merchant Jacopo di Vanni is the oldest known document for Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, held in Florence's State Archives.
• A 2024 Consorzio-unveiled document shows the term 'Vino Nobile' was first used in 1766 by the Jesuit order, not 1787 as previously thought.
• Thomas Jefferson received 473 bottles of Montepulciano in November 1805 and requested 400 bottles annually, praising them as the best he had received.