For those of you who have been following the excitement of Harvest 2026 here at Diemersfontein, we’re delighted to share another overview of our progress in bringing you the next vintage of your favourite wines…

Only this past week, we finished picking our last blocks of Pinotage. The Pinotage did very well overall, even delivering a slightly higher yield than we initially expected. We’ve also harvested the Grenache Noir this past week, the backbone of our Rosé, so we are very excited to see what shade of pink these grapes will deliver.

Having finished the harvesting of all our Chenin Blanc blocks, these wines are going through their alcoholic fermentation at the moment. The entire cellar now smells like a fruit salad, because of the prominent pineapple, peach and citrus flavours that emanate from these wines.

We were also delighted with the quality of the grapes harvested from our Cabernet Franc blocks. Even though this varietal is prone to sun damage, we did some smart canopy management to allow a little more sun onto the bunches. This was done to avoid some of the excessive green characteristics normally associated with Cab Franc, but we are very happy that our smart foliage management avoided excessive exposure and instead delivered grapes that are in perfect condition.

Still on the cards for this harvest is to pinch the stalks on one of our Viognier blocks to vine-dry the grapes, which concentrates the flavour and the sugar levels. These grapes, looking like little bunches of raisins by the time we pick them, will then be used to make our deliciously indulgent Sweet Sue dessert wine.

One of the last varietals that will end up taking the journey from the vineyard to the cellar is the Malbec, also sourcing some fruit from slightly further afield to enlarge our production of the Carpe Diem Malbec Reserve.

So once all the grapes are eventually safely in the cellar, we will shift our focus to our olive orchards. As at the moment, the olives have started to undergo the onset of the ripening, changing from green to black, a sign that they are getting close to being harvested and then transformed into our Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Even though this is a little earlier than we expected, we remain subservient to mother nature dictating when to pick the fruit at their optimal ripeness.

Meanwhile, back in the cellar, we’re playing our very own version of Tetris by attempting to manage our available capacity as effectively as possible. We’re also busy getting plans in place to tend to the vineyards once harvest has been wrapped up. This includes a fertiliser program, introduction of a cover crop ahead of winter, and doing soil preparation for the new vines we are looking to plant.

And that’s it for now, friends; we’re in the home stretch of harvest 2026! The adage goes that hindsight is always twenty-twenty, so I’ll check in with you again once the harvest is done, to offer you a post-harvest overview of what to expect from our latest vintage.