A Folk Horror Novel by J.F. Penn
Blood Vintage
The perfect wine requires the darkest sacrifice.
Rebecca never expected her architecture career to end in a viral video.
Hounded by the online mob, she flees London for rural Somerset, the county where her sister Grace vanished five years ago, and takes a harvest job at Standing Stone Cellars, a biodynamic vineyard famous for wines that shouldn't be possible in the English climate.
Under ancient oaks and standing stones, the community welcomes her like family.
But the festivals that mark the wine-making year hide an older calendar, workers keep disappearing in the night, and the closer Rebecca comes to belonging, the closer she comes to the truth beneath the vines: every exceptional vintage demands its sacrifice, and the land has been waiting for her.
The Wicker Man meets Midsommar in an English vineyard.
Blood Vintage is a standalone folk horror novel by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn, set on a biodynamic vineyard in Somerset, England. It follows the wine-making year through the pagan wheel of festivals, from Beltane through Lammas to Samhain, as an incomer uncovers the blood sacrifice behind an impossible vintage. First published in 2024 following a Kickstarter campaign, it is available in ebook, paperback, large print, a special foiled hardback, and audiobook.
Available in ebook, paperback, foiled hardback, large print and audiobook. Buying direct supports the author most, and ships worldwide.
The research behind the book
The Horned God and the Wild Hunt
Herne the Hunter, from medieval oak to Robin of Sherwood, filmed in the woods near Jo's home.
The Dark Gathering
Britain's blackened-face Border Morris, the real model for the novel's Night Gathering dancers.
Learn more → WineBiodynamics: farming or folk magic?
Horn manure, lunar calendars, and the workshop where Jo learned to stir the dynamiser.
Learn more → The placeLimeburn Hill: the real vineyard
Blood Vintage grew from visits to a real biodynamic vineyard in the hills south of Bristol. Jo walked the rows, met the winemakers, and asked what the old ways might really feed.
Learn more → CraftCarving a Green Man
The face in the leaves, from Gothic cathedrals to the stone Jo carved herself.
Learn more →Standing stones and ley lines
Why the English landscape keeps its old alignments, and what the novel plants among them.
The Bacchae
The 2,400-year-old Greek tragedy of wine and frenzy hidden inside the story's DNA.
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