A quarter of a century. Blimey.

It’s the end of the summer holidays, our twentysomething children have left this week and we made the decision yesterday, Friday, to start the harvest this coming Monday.

And if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do when you have an end-of-month newsletter to write it’s to start looking through boxes and boxes of old photos. (Note to self: digitise all the old photos, and write that bloody memoir.)

Anyway, it’s all go. We’ve been lucky enough to have had several weeks of glorious weather until the rain came on Thursday. It’s not an early vintage, by the way, it’s just that we need to pick the white grapes for our sparkling Crémant while they still have lots of crisp acidity and aren’t too high in sugar.

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All the best

Gavin & Angela Quinney

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We moved to Bauduc at the end of August 1999, having seen it for the first time in July and signed a ‘heads of agreement’ on 4 August. We bought the place with the bunches on the vines, with the harvest about to kick off.

1999 was our first harvest but that was with the fruit we ‘inherited’, so really 2024 is our 25th full season in charge.

All the team were French, unsurprisingly. We took on Nelly, left, as a trainee for the harvest. We all got on fine but Jackie and Serge left quite soon after we arrived (pushed and jumped, respectively). They’re to the left and right of me in the photo on the right. Benoit on the far right was a nice guy who stayed for several years, and now runs his own bottling business, I believe.

Jeanette, in the centre, worked in the office but she departed not long after. I reckon that’s Barbara Abraham in the pale blue top and a Master of Wine, no less, who helped out for a few days during the harvest. She must have thought we were slightly bonkers.

Georgie was only four and Sophie just two so it was a ‘now or never’ kind of moment for us. Here they are with Daniel, handling his strange language as only children know how.

We moved into the farmhouse. Children can adapt to new circumstances quite well, especially when new pets are part of the package.

Sophie collecting grapes in 1999.

Two of our children were born in London, the other two in Bordeaux. Bugs was born in January 2001 and this was during the harvest that year.

Georgie by the Sauvignon sorting table in 2001, with Ange, Sophie and Bugs looking on in the background.

Tom was born after the end of the 2003 harvest in October.

Ange with tiny Tom, surrounded by Sophie, Bugs and Georgie, along with her mum and dad. Val sadly died from cancer in 2006 and is much missed. Ange has just spent a few days with David watching the cricket at Lords, so some things haven’t changed.

Fast forward to this August and here’s Georgie with her lovely, young dog Russo and Sophie holding our slightly more mature Pavie.

Bugs – behind Ange – made it over for a few days in August before going off to do a Masters in Sweden and Tom, now 20, was here for his summer hols before flying back to McGill Uni in Montreal, where Bugs was beforehand. David kindly treated us to lunch at Le Jardin near Saint-Emilion. (Excellent three-course lunch for €29.50 by the way and good value wines.)

Sophie, Ange, Tom, Bugs, David, Georgie and yours truly – an all too rare but welcome summer and Christmas event to have all the children at home. The photo was taken by Georgie’s boyfriend Sam, who was happy to oblige as he’d just been whacked in the face by a cricket ball in London, the day before flying. Meanwhile, if I’d figured out how short the window was for the snap to happen, my dress sense might have been sharper.

Soon after that, I managed to pop over to Worcestershire for a few days to see my mother Diana in her care home, while staying with my sister Sannah and brother-in-law Dominic. She’s been a bit poorly but feeling a little better now.

It’s been lovely having everyone to stay but the work hasn’t stopped. Ange on carton and labelling duty with Nelly this week.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tasting and testing the grapes. And we’re off…

And as well as the harvest starting on Monday, the lads will hopefully be back to carry on replacing the roof. And part of a turret.

Onwards and upwards.