The Sommly Blog
Dispatches from the UK wine scene.
The pickers went into the vineyards on August 13th. In Burgundy. That date has not happened in recorded history, or at least not since the 1500s, when a French monk named Salomon Rose began keeping harvest records that wine historians still cite today.
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The grapes going into your next bottle of Champagne were picked in August.
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The grapes in Franciacorta were already being picked in late July 2026. For a region that built its reputation on slow, cool ripening, that's a strange sentence to write.
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The Sicilian harvest started early this year. Specifically, around July 28, according to Wine Business, with growers describing conditions as "decidedly positive." That's a phrase you don't hear much from European wine producers in the summer of 2026.
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The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board confirmed it on July 31st: growers across England and Wales are picking right now, weeks ahead of any harvest this century.
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The duty on a bottle of still wine sold at a UK vineyard is the same as the duty on that same bottle sold in a Tesco in Slough. There is no discount for the small producer who grew the grapes, harvested them, made the wine, bottled it, and is now pouring you a glass twenty feet from the vines. That has always struck me as a bit mad.
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Nervous about your first wine tasting? Here is what actually happens, what to wear, and why you do not need to know a single thing about wine to enjoy it.
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An honest look at UK wine clubs - the types, what to check before you commit, and whether a wine subscription is actually worth the money. No snobbery.
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The Kent coast produces some genuinely strange wine. Not strange-bad. Strange in the sense that you stand in a Waitrose in Bromley, pick up a bottle of something made forty miles away, and still can't quite believe it exists.
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Four trophies. One Dorset estate. That's not a good night at the WineGB Awards, that's a statement.
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The Judgement of Paris happened fifty years ago, and French wine has never quite recovered its monopoly on the conversation.
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Peter Hall built Breaky Bottom over fifty years on a Sussex chalk slope. Since his death, his family have listed it with Knight Frank for £4m.
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Got a story, a tasting you loved, or a corner of the wine world you want to share? We're always open to pitches from writers, sommeliers, and independents.
