White Castle Vineyard

White Castle Vineyard is a Welsh vineyard situated near the market towns of Abergavenny and Monmouth it is owned and run by Robb and Nicola Merchant.

2024 vintage report

Vintage 2024 at White Castle was the most challenging in our 15 years of grape growing. Disease pressure was high all year as result of the wet warm conditions, we did however remain disease free. The spring was looking good with bud burst even, some of the early ripping varieties even managed good flowering in late June.  It was July when things started to stall rain disrupted the later flowering. Veraison started well and whilst the crop on some varieties was small we were optimistic. That we would have a reasonable crop.  That changed in mid September as there had been a real lack of sunshine, we had had warm temperatures but lacked the sun’s rays. Harvest dates were getting later and later.  We were forced to pick on 10th October 2024 as there was a hard frost forecast for 11th October and it came with a vengeance. The grapes we harvested were showing good quality and ripeness but volume was down by around 60% overall. This was disheartening as we our new  Gwindy [Winery] was ready and it would have been great to see more wine in the vats. That however is farming, we now look forward to vintage 2025. Very happy with the wines we will be producing albeit as small volume.