Dyrehøj Vingård

Sleeves rolled into a new cellar year

Jacob Bruun-Jensen took up the work in 2025, carrying the owner and winemaker role at Dyrehøj Vingård in Røsnæs, Kalundborg, with a plain promise to roll up his sleeves. Jacob Bruun-Jensen came to the estate after owning and operating a vineyard south of San Francisco in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a California chapter that gave him time on the tools before the move to this coastal Danish site. At Dyrehøj, the role is not a desk title. It runs through the vineyard, the cellar, and the decisions that turn Røsnæs fruit into the house’s RÖS wines.

He inherited a place already shaped by Tom’s earlier work, and his own words set the tone of the handover: “I would like to thank Tom for the huge effort he has put into Dyrehøj Vingård. I plan to build on the good work, and I am very much looking forward to rolling up my sleeves in the new year.” That is a practical kind of lineage. It asks the new maker to listen before changing tempo, to read the rows before imposing a method, and to keep continuity visible in the glass.

Solaris under coastal light

The vineyard works at a scale few Danish estates can match, with about 13 hectares under vine and over 50,000 vines on the Røsnæs peninsula. Solaris sits at the center of the planting, joined by Souvignier Gris, Muscaris, Johanniter, Cabernet Cantor, Rondo, and Monarch. Those choices belong to a cool, maritime discipline: varieties selected for northern conditions, ripening under long light, sea air, and the relatively dry exposure of Zealand’s western edge.

The program is broad without losing its local address. Under the RÖS name, Dyrehøj makes still white, rosé, red, sparkling, dessert, orange, and fortified wines, with some spirits produced on site. The work asks for different timing in the cellar, from the fruit-preserving handling of white and rosé lots to the separate patience of sparkling and fortified styles. The house does not spell out every vessel or fermentation choice, and this is Danish wine built from a coastal site, hybrid varieties, and a cellar that has to translate several ripenesses into several forms.

Rows, water, and the tasting room

The place feels open before it feels polished. Rows run across a farm landscape on the sunny Røsnæs peninsula, with fields, vine blocks, and views toward the water setting the pace around the cellar and tasting room. It is a working vineyard with a guest-facing rhythm, relaxed enough for conversation, structured enough that the craft remains present.

In the room, the wines carry the geography back to the counter: Solaris for brightness, Souvignier Gris and Muscaris for aromatic range, Cabernet Cantor and Rondo for the red side of the bench. Tours and tastings bring visitors close to the scale of the estate, but the lasting impression is not the view alone. It is the sight of a Danish vineyard treating its own climate as material, not limitation.

A Danish vineyard carried forward

Dyrehøj matters most as a place of continuity. Bruun-Jensen did not arrive to erase the predecessor’s hand; he arrived to carry the work into its next season, with Røsnæs still at the center of the method. The next chapter is already concrete enough: 2025 marks his first year at Dyrehøj Vingård, and the sleeves he named are now in the rows of Solaris.