HARVEST REPORT 2025

I went into vintage 2025 with a mix of emotions. It was Yo El Rey's 7th vintage (I didn't make any wine in 2021), and as much as there was great momentum behind the brand, the global wine trade was facing its own challenges. International markets were (and still are) wobbling to a degree, and there seems to be a significant surplus of wine knocking about. From California to Puglia to the Swartland, many winemakers are facing the same issues—a shrinking wine drinking demographic, a desire to spend less on wine, and perhaps a more discerning crowd. It isn't all doom and gloom, as hopefully there is something of a 'thinning of the crowd' as consumers draw nearer to better farmed, better made wines, and perhaps some of the mass produced crap that's out there falls away. All that being said, I had to make some big decisions in 2025, and the decision was to make less. Consolidate, focus on the Walker Bay appellation, and cut-out a lot of the noise.

There was a good growing season through the spring and in the build up to summer, which meant the ripening was slow and steady with good warmth and enough water for the grapes to reach a ripeness that produced beautiful aromatics and concentration in the wines.

A lot of what I struggled with this year (it’s always a challenge, but more so than usual), were decisions on the picking days. One always makes these calls by relying on taste and a juice analysis. Nothing gives you a better gauge of where the fruit is actually at than by simply tasting it. Yes, it’s grape juice loaded with sugar, but you get a sense of the tannin in the skins, you get a feel for the acidity, and fundamentally, you can start to create a picture of how you want the wine to look and feel. That being said, the taste test can also be misleading sometimes, so a lab analysis will spit out the accurate numbers of what you're working with.

2025 seemed to throw a lot of people off when it came to picking days. I spoke to a few winemakers—myself included—who had looked at the analysis and done all the right things, only to have picked a little too early in the end. It seemed acids and sugars were not developing in as much of a linear way as expected, and for those of us small producers who rely on third parties for picking and transport, we have less wiggle room in making last minute calls due to having to be exceedingly organised in advance. Nonetheless, even if the wines might be a wee bit lighter in 2025, there is incredible flavour and depth to them.

This year I made just two wines, the Good Luck Blanc and Good Luck Rosé. Interestingly, the canopies in the Good Luck Syrah block struggled this year, and in the build up to actual harvest day, many of the vines sat thin and the grapes were unusually exposed. As always, the ever present menace of the pesky starlings loomed, and so because I made no red from this year, I picked it early, whole bunch pressed it all, and produced what I think is probably one of the best vintages of Good Luck  rosé I’ve ever made.

The style of the Good Luck Blanc 2025 will be quite different to the 2024. 2024 there was a full, week long maceration on the skins, where as this year most of it was whole bunch pressed, with only a small portion of it was macerated. All of it has been blended together, and so the wine will still be more of a textured white than an intense skin-contact orange.

2025 also saw the first iterations of the Nuvo Nivo project for Modal Wines in the U.K. come to life. It's an inspiring project, and one that I feel very grateful to be a part of. More on that to come in another journal entry, but there is now a Chenin Blanc from Durbanville and a light, fresh Merlot from Paarl under the Nuvo Nivo label being made for London.

Overall, I'd say the wines from 2025 have a true finesse to them. They are delicate but concentrated, and have a phenomenal balance. Energetically they feel incredibly vibrant, and I'm excited to see how they evolve in bottle over the next year. The wines were bottled on 26th of January 2026.