Plant a sparkling wine vineyard here in Britain Really?!

ineyards have always been a common part of the countryside for our European neighbours. When a deciding which crop to plant, grape vines are probably fairly high on a landowners list of possibilities. Though reputed to have crossed our shores with the Romans, vineyards have also been a part of the UK’s rural scene, certainly since the Norman Conquest. Now, with English Wine, particularly Sparkling Wine, gaining an enviable reputation and sales worldwide, more vineyards are springing up in the UK’s countryside every year and that’s not confined to the south coast. With economic pressures on other crops, British farmers are increasingly looking at vines as a realistic new source of income. Over 400 vineyards now exist at an average size of 3.29 hectares. Last year 30,346 hectolitres was produced, equating to just over 4 million bottles and the trend is upward in response to growing consumer demand which will hit a new peak this year thanks to the 2012 Olympic Games. In response to this interesting trend, Field & Rural Life will run a monthly feature on one such emerging vineyard, illustrating month by month, the tasks involved in cultivating vines in the UK climate. English Oak Vineyard was first planted in 2007 on land that was previously used for grazing and planting traditional arable crops.

It is located just 6 miles from the centre of Pool in Dorset, where Lytchett Matravers village sits comfortably in a familiar picturesque English green belt landscape of attractive small valleys, open fields and occasional thatched cottages.  Partners Andrew Pharoah and Sarah Atkins exchanged a successful background in IT business management and sales to ride the crest of the growing UK wine industry and have never looked back. They studied viticulture at Plumpton College in Sussex, before choosing a suitable site and contracting the experience and expertise of winemaker Dermot Sugrue to the team. Dermot’s well equipped winery, featured on the BBC’s Oz and James TV series, has the benefit of a traditional Coquard gentle whole bunch press, a type used extensively in Champagne to optimise quality, something that is a key part of English Oak's quality commitment. With 23,000 vines, sourced from around the Champagne region in France, a now thriving 23 acre vineyard has emerged, producing delicious, crisp, lemon Chardonnays and warm, sensuously fragrant, smooth Pinot grapes, which are blended together in the traditional manner to produce Dorset’s own English Sparkling Wine.

In this series of monthly features, they will explain in detail step by step all that is involved in selecting a suitable site, choosing vine varieties and carrying out, month by month, the process of growing and harvesting a substantial yield of high quality grapes for use in the making of Quality English Sparkling Wine. Starting with winter pruning, the series extends into trellising and vine training, the use of labour saving equipment and the rigours of disease and pest control to name but a few of the topics covered. If you have considered turning land over to a vineyard, or are simply a wine enthusiast, you are guaranteed a fascinating insight into the detailed workings of viticulture in a fast growing UK wine industry.
Sarah and Andrews business philosophy is simple. In an increasingly bland, high carbon miles world, corporately obsessed with ‘bigger is better’, their planting and wine making is on a scale where the character sealed inside every individual bottle still matters, where the consumer can still enjoy quality, while at the same time feel that increasingly missed and apparently old fashioned sense of pride in a personal, local and unashamedly “Buy British” consumer choice. We should all drink to that!

After what has seemed a long five year wait, necessitated by the intricate and tortuously long winded sparkling wine making process, the first English Oak vintage at last reached the market in 2011.Andrew and Sarah can be found at www.englishoakvineyard.co.uk and additional background information is also available from the UK Vineyards Association at www.ukva.org.uk.