A few words from Waverley Hills winemaker, Johan Delport, on their grape and olive harvest.

“The 2017 wine harvest will be remembered for its very hot and dry conditions. Due to these conditions the grapes were really small and concentrated, which in turn gave concentrated and good quality wines. This is also evident in this early stages of all the wines’ development. Thus far the stand out wines seems to be the Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Grenache.

We had about a 15% larger harvest than in 2016, because of better winter rains during 2016 than the previous winter, when we were hit hard by the drought. Everybody is looking forward to how the 2017 vintage wines will do over the coming years.

The olive harvest will be complete by the end of June. The trees seemed fuller but the sizes are subsequently smaller, due to the drought.   We ,unfortunately, had terribly strong winds during the middle of May, subsequently many Kalamata olives were lost. The challenges of farming make each season prone to different expectations and results.”