As we kick off a new year it seemed appropriate to look back at the year we just completed. 2025 was another great year for Balsall Creek. We saw some significant developments with our business and experienced some emerging trends. Our overall business, in revenue, cases sold, and tasting room traffic grew substantially in 2025. These increases were welcome results considering the current market challenges the industry is experiencing.
We started 2025 with a focus on increasing event traffic at the Estate House with a goal of getting more people to experience the facility. We find that once guests taste our exceptional offering of estate grown wines, see the Estate House in person, meet our staff, and experience everything Balsall Creek has to offer, they find it to be something they want to be a part of. The events in 2025 included continuing with our annual Harvest Dinner and Sparkling Soiree, but also included our Sips & Sounds summer music series, our Midsummer Celebration, a wine education series, hosting the Calkins Lane Block Party, star gazing, chef dinners, and much more. These events proved to be very successful, highlighting a niche in the market that allowed for the new Social Tier of membership we launched that focuses on events more than wine shipments. Events will definitely continue to be a focus for Balsall Creek in 2026.
We also had a great harvest in 2025. We continued to manage the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay blocks to just one cluster per shoot, allowing the vines to focus all of their resources on fewer clusters, producing some exceptional fruit (and based on our barrel tastings, some exceptional wines). The tonnage levels were right on plan, and both our vineyard and winemaking staff did an excellent job to make this harvest a success.
We also saw an interesting trend from our customers in 2025. In 2024, our sales of red wine were 55% and white wine 45%. In 2025 that mix shifted to 48% red wines and 52% white wines. We attribute this to a couple factors: one is our unique offering of white wines that includes Sauvignon Blanc and Aligoté giving us the ability to provide an all white wine flight in addition to an all red wine flight in the tasting room. The second factor is a trend in the market toward more white wine, especially high-quality whites like the wines we produce at Balsall Creek. We had 10 wines scored this year by various reviewers, including four white wines and all of the scores were 90+ points with six of the 10 wines receiving a score of 94 points, including two of our white wines.