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The Stressed Yeast Society
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WSET School, London
Lavinia Cremonese / Florence
Lynn de Vries / Amsterdam
Mark Haigh / London
Irene López / Bilbao
Sophie Milnes / London
Miguel Silva / Lisbon
Peder Sortland / Stavanger
Jennifer Thörn / Stockholm
Ben Thuriaux-Alemán / Brighton
Margriet Vande Zande / Beaconsfield
4.9 - 5.0
Stellar+
4.6 - 4.8
Stellar
4.3 - 4.5
Remarkable
4.0 - 4.2
Worthy
3.5 - 3.9
Decent
(Ad-hoc)
Disappointing
Logroño (La Rioja)
Spain
18-23 June 2026
The Greyhound Beaconsfield
UK
2025
Madeira
Portugal
2024
Barahonda
D.O. Yecla
YeclaCENTURY-OLD & FORWARD-LOOKING
[More...]
Dominical R
2021
Prior Lucas
BairradaEVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE
[More...]
The Corridor Pinot Noir
2019
Authentique Wine Cellars
Willamette ValleyOREGON, COMPOSED
[More...]
2014
Egon Müller
Mosel
STEEP SLOPES AND PRECISE FRUIT
[More...]
BEFORE THE GRAPES ARRIVE
05.09.2026
Harvest started early in many wine regions this year. In Burgundy, grapes for Crémant were being picked from 8 August — a new record for the region. By the time many wineries were already deep into harvest, I was only just arriving in the Lucca hills, where everything was still waiting to begin.
It was the end of August, and I had arrived with two suitcases, a freshly completed WSET Diploma and plenty of experience from the sommelier side of wine — but very little from the winemaking side. A lot of theory, essentially, and very little idea of what I was actually doing.
A few months earlier, in late April, I had been applying for internships and winery jobs across Europe. Anything where my skills — or perhaps more accurately, my lack of skills — vaguely fitted, I applied for. Most applications disappeared into the void. Then a winery in Tuscany replied. One interview later, I had a position, and suddenly I was planning what to pack for several weeks working a harvest.
Now I was here.
What surprised me first was how calm everything felt. Social media tends to portray the lead-up to harvest as a race, so I had expected more urgency. Instead, everyone was quietly preparing. Tents went up over the sorting line. Water was pumped into 30hL oak vats so the wood could swell and seal after almost a year empty. Barrels and bottles were moved, storage rooms cleaned, tanks scrubbed and grape samples sent to the lab for malic acid, total acidity, pH and sugar analysis.
I also spent the first few days trying to work out who did what. That quickly proved unnecessary. There is a healthy overlap of jobs here; everyone seems to do a bit of everything, and I’m slowly learning that understanding the organisational chart might be less important than simply noticing what needs doing.
My first morning was spent green harvesting Syrah. I knew the theory and understood why we were doing it, but theory had not prepared me for the required speed. Camilla, who hired me, told me not to think so much and to find the balance between “good work and fast work.” Apparently I had mastered the first half. A few days later, the second was beginning to come along.
Harvest itself remained undecided. At one point I was told it might begin in two days; a few hours later, that had already changed. So we kept preparing — labelling bottles, adding foil, packing orders, moving things and cleaning things.
On my third day, we took another round of grape samples. Cutting bunches that would never become wine felt strangely wrong. We crushed them by hand, separated the juice from skins and stems, then filled a tall measuring cylinder. A Babo hydrometer was lowered into the must to estimate sugar concentration from its density.
At Valgiano everyone simply calls the reading “Babo.” It took me a moment to catch on, my studies had focused on Brix and Oechsle. Fresh WSET Diploma in hand, and three days into working at a winery, I was already learning a new way of talking about something I thought I knew.
I suspect that might become a recurring theme.
For now, though, we are still waiting. Harvest might start in two days. Or it might not.
- JT