Season report
We often talk about patience with our wines: patience during the growing season. Patience in winemaking, letting the wines develop at their own pace. Patience in enjoying some of our wines, decanting them, or cellaring them for the future.
Harvest is not usually a time for patience. It’s when everything happens quickly, from the moment taste tests confirm the grapes are ready, it’s all systems go.
But this year’s harvest at Cloudy Bay was an exercise in patience. The New Zealand summer took its own summer holiday, and that meant many of the vines decided they weren’t quite finished with ripening.
Marlborough
The 2025 growing season began early despite following a frost-heavy winter. Spring was mild and trouble-free, and a warm flowering period led to high yield potential. Although summer brought an unusually overcast six-week stretch, careful crop thinning ensured fruit quality.
As our Viticultural Director John Flanagan notes, “It’s a vintage that required patience.”
“From the start, we were ten days behind… Our decisions on picking were based more on taste than numbers this year. Some vineyards came in at lower Brix* than we might normally expect, but flavour-wise, they were exactly where we wanted them to be.”
*Brix: how wine people say ‘sugar levels’.
Central Otago
Central Otago’s growing season never quite found its full stride, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“2025 was akin to 2021, where we just never saw a large accumulation of Growing Degree Days*,” says Central Otago Vineyard Manager Derek Beirnes.
“We started off with higher than normal soil moisture, but went hard and early with a shoot thin that lowered our crop load early on.”
Derek and his team kept fruit levels low and only needed to do a little bit of leaf plucking at Northburn. Summer brought a generous and evenly spread 250mm of rainfall, which made the vines very happy. “Tannin development at Northburn was excellent, and the fruit quality at both sites was high,” says Derek.
*Growing Degree Days: when the weather is, as Goldilocks would say, just right for fruit to grow on the vines. Fewer GDDs usually means a cooler, slower-growing season.
When the time is ripe
Most years, once we hit peak ripeness, it’s all systems go: the vineyard crews work tirelessly to bring the fruit from vine to winery very quickly, while the winemaking team works quickly to press* and rack* (transfer the wines into tanks and barrels).
Not so for 2025. As most of New Zealand will tell you, summer went AWOL. For us, it happened right around picking time: apart from a couple of traditionally early vineyards that ripened, and in a rarity for a harvest, we even paused our picking for a few days.
*Press: squish the grapes.
*Rack: move the juice (it’s not wine yet!) into different tanks and barrels.
“One of my favourite things about this harvest was advising the winemaking team that we needed to pause the Sauvignon harvest for 4 days to ensure that we harvested fruit at the perfect ripeness,” says John.
“This was the best thing we could have done, as the fruit we harvested from 26th March onwards was outstanding.”
That measured decision-making may have slowed things down in the winery, but Hannah Ternent agrees that it was necessary to bring in such exceptional fruit.
“Fortunately, the weather was very kind to us, and we did not experience any significant rainfall until our last fruit was tucked safely away in the winery,” she says. “The fruit looked lovely, and there were some beautiful flavours coming from all of the varieties.”
Nice, different, unusual
“It was a weird vintage. It started early, but there wasn’t the usual rush of fruit, with everything taking its time to ripen.”
Kelly Stuart - Winemaker
Even when Sauvignon started, there were only one or two days when we felt the usual harvest pressure to rack quickly because they were starting to harvest the block that would eventually refill the tank.
She says one of the most interesting consequences of the quieter harvest was an appreciation of the hustle and bustle, and even the noisy older winery equipment.
“Because the fruit came in slowly, we didn’t have to use our old press Bin A* until the end, and we didn’t realise how the noises of the old presses and fruit hitting the hopper* were such a part of harvest,” she muses. “It felt like something was missing—until the last 48 hours, when it was a rush to get it all in before the rain, and we had to fire up the old press area.”
The slower pace also brought some pleasant surprises for Kelly:
“Having a few empty tanks meant I didn’t need my Tetris skills to fit the last of the juice in the winery. Plus, I’ve never seen such a clean winery in the middle of harvest!”
*Hopper: a big funnel for grapes going into the presses.
*Bin A: it’s not an actual bin - it’s the old press area, where we used to process all of our Sauvignon Blanc. Noisy and definitely on its way to retirement, but not quite out to pasture just yet.
A chance to get out in the garden
Hannah Ternent says the extra time meant she and her viticulture team could crack on with some of the important post-harvest tasks.
“We utilised the downtime that we had to get underway with planting some cover crops* in our estate vineyards, introducing some wonderful biodiversity into our vineyard ecosystems with different species of plants,” she says.
“We’re looking forward to the first rains of autumn and winter to see these cover crops bursting into life.”
Cover crops: plants we grow between the rows in our vineyards. They keep the soil and vines healthy, promote biodiversity, and provide fuel for our organic lawnmowers.
Organic lawnmowers: sheep.
A year for Chardonnay
We asked the whole team which wine they were looking forward to the most, and Chardonnay 2025 was the hands-down winner.
“Chardonnay – hands down. It was exceptional this season,” says John.
“There were some stunning parcels of fruit harvested for the Chardonnay,” says Hannah. “I am always really excited to see what the wine-making team will do with them, because there are so many different techniques in the winery that can be used with Chardonnay.”
Highlights
For Nikolai, one of the best things about 2025 was the sense of familiarity in the team itself, with many returning faces.
“We really work hard to bring back at least a third [of our crews] each year, and this retaining of talent is very valuable,” he says. “There’s something special about working with people who already understand how Cloudy Bay operates and the rhythms we have here.”
“We started a Winery Olympics at the end of induction week and this is a great way for everyone to come together and get to know each other,” he Nikolai. “Not to mention the ‘Best Hi-Vis’ competition…”
Nikolai St George and Jim White raise their glasses to the end of harvest — a season of hard work, ripe fruit, and well-earned cheers.
Hannah recalls a shared lunch for the hand harvest team as her highlight.
“Cloudy Bay put on a BBQ, salads, breads, soft drinks and some sweet treats for the 90-strong team, and we got together at lunch time at our Brook St vineyard after they had finished hand harvesting some Sauvignon Blanc for Te Koko.”
“We were celebrating their incredible efforts throughout the season and farewelling some of the team who were due to go home in the coming days. There was singing, speeches and some beautiful photos…the team even sang happy birthday to John [Flanagan]. It was such a special occasion and one that I will certainly cherish.”
Looking forward
Now, with wines safely in tanks and barrels, the focus shifts from vineyard to cellar. The team is confident that 2025 will be one to watch: not because it dazzles, but because it speaks of precision, balance, time - and most importantly, patience.
Maybe that’s what made this vintage special: in a world that often rewards speed and noise, 2025 reminded us of the beauty in slowing down.
