Great Britain 1662-2024 The production of sparkling wine in Britain – although not from home-grown grapes – is verifiably more than 350 years old, and we know from the two papers read at the newly-founded Royal Society in December 1662 that sugar added to a fermented product and sealed in a bottle with a tightly […]
This report has been authored by Stephen Skelton MW using data from the WineGB Harvest Yield Survey 2024 and other cited sources. Insights and analysis were provided by Mark Laughton. Please click here to view or download the report.
Preparing to plant So you’ve got the land, the doubts about being a vineyard owner have long been dismissed, your husband/wife/partner have given the enterprise their blessing and the box that your friend Pandora has been keeping for you all these years is well and truly open. Of course, by now, most of those planning […]
Preparing to Plant Part 2, I focus on four critical aspects of vineyard management: pruning, trellising, weed control, and post-planting care. I discuss pruning techniques in relation to vine density and trellis design, highlighting the popularity of cane pruning in cooler climates like England and Wales. I emphasize the importance of installing trellises early, using […]
Establishing a new vineyard is an expensive process and whether you are proposing to grow grapes to sell or go the whole hog and make and sell wine, considerable amounts of capital, both fixed and working, will be needed. Click here to read or download a PDF of the full article which appeared in Vineyard […]
Soil, the factory floor of every vineyard, is much misunderstood. Read a few back labels, look at a few websites, and if you believe what you read, the wine in that bottle and the different wines coming from whichever producer owns that website will all taste the way they taste just because of the soil […]
Of all the decisions that have to be taken in order to plant a vineyard, finding the right site for your enterprise is undoubtedly the hardest, the most expensive and the one that can never be changed. Oh and I forgot to mention, the one that probably has more influence on deciding the quality and […]
In early 1972, with our first child recently born, the need for a larger house soon became apparent and one Saturday morning we set out house-hunting. One of the houses we looked at that weekend was in Nettlestead, near Maidstone, and as we drove into the drive, we were confronted with a small vineyard. We […]
In this article, I recount my early experiences in viticulture, starting in 1975 as an intern at the Schönborn estate in Germany. There, I spent long days working on steep vineyards and embraced opportunities to learn at Geisenheim, Germany’s top wine school, under the guidance of Professor Helmut Becker. Upon returning to England, my family acquired […]
Ask your average shopper to name the variety of wheat that’s gone into their daily loaf, and its my guess that unless you happened to have approached an arable farmer, the likely answer is ‘dunnow’. Ask the same person the same question, but substitute ‘beer’ for ‘wheat’ and my guess is that the answer would […]