Irish Wine Estates

Directions Website

Irish Wine Estates A quiet vineyard dream in the Irish countryside. Wine may come, or it may not
But the story will be worth the watch🥂

03/10/2026

And then the first harvest began.

Nicola picking Phoenix from our pilot plot, with Moose providing precisely the level of operational support we’ve come to expect.

Our first ever Irish W**e Estates harvest. 2026 is going to be a year we remember.

**eEstates **e

02/10/2026

A momentous day for Irish W**e Estates.

Two years after we planted our small pilot vineyard, Nicola and I are about to begin our first ever IWE harvest.

The quantities are tiny. But that really isn’t the point. For the first time, we’re not just planting vines, watering them, pruning them and worrying about them. We’re picking grapes.

Harvest 2026. A small crop. A very big moment.

**eEstates **e

01/10/2026

I don’t think I’ll be hired to build walls anytime soon.

One of the useful things about doing so much of this project ourselves is discovering, occasionally quite quickly, which jobs should probably be left to people who actually know what they’re doing.

Still, you learn more by trying than by standing beside it offering expert commentary.

**eEstates

30/09/2026

For the first time this autumn, I’m very, very worried.

Not because of disease or ripening, but because of the weather. A storm can undo a lot of careful work in a very short space of time.

We’ve done what we can. Now it’s a case of watching the forecast and waiting to see what actually arrives.

**eEstates

29/09/2026

The concrete is in. Now for the question you would ideally like answered before building anything on top of it: is the foundation actually level?

There are jobs on a farm where being roughly right is perfectly adequate.

Foundations have an irritating tendency not to be one of them.

**eEstates

28/09/2026

No messing now. The concrete is going in.

Planning is wonderfully forgiving. You can move a line, change a measurement and have another think.

Concrete is rather less interested in your strategic flexibility.

Another bit of the farm changing in real time as we build the infrastructure that will eventually sit behind the vineyard and visitor experience.

**eEstates

27/09/2026

The acid test. Literally.

Ripeness is not just about how much sugar is in a grape. Acidity matters too, particularly in a cool climate where the balance between the two can change quickly as harvest approaches.

So alongside tasting the fruit and measuring sugar, Nicola is looking at acidity as another piece of the puzzle.

One number rarely gives you the answer. Several good measurements start to tell a story.

**eEstates **e **emaking **eScience

26/09/2026

What could possibly go wrong?

There is something wonderfully reassuring about reaching the stage where a job stops being lines on a plan and starts involving excavations, levels and concrete.

Also slightly terrifying, because mistakes become considerably harder to edit once the concrete wagon arrives.

Another small piece of the physical infrastructure around Irish W**e Estates taking shape.

**eEstates

24/09/2026

How do you know when grapes are actually getting close to ripe?

One useful piece of evidence is sugar. Nicola is checking the grapes rather than relying on how they look from a few feet away.

Sugar does not tell us everything, but together with acidity, taste and the condition of the fruit it helps turn a judgement call into a much better-informed decision.

The more we measure, the less we have to guess.

**eEstates **e **emaking

Address

Ballyclery
Roscrea

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Irish Wine Estates posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category