You may have noticed that we have been rather busy lately at the vineyard. As well as looking after our existing vines, we have been slowly preparing new land for a new and exciting chapter in our story. Last summer we started work by moving the old hedge at the bottom of the vineyard, extending downwards towards the lime avenue. The new field has been ploughed for the first time in decades and the soil structure improved by growing green crops. After two years of improving the soil, we were finally ready to get the vines in the ground over the Easter weekend.
One of the hardest and most stressful jobs when planting a vineyard is having to taste lots of wines to choose your new varieties! But we’ve taken one for the team and a few glasses later, we have chosen Seyval Blanc as our new addition. Known for its delicate citrus and pear notes, Seyval Blanc is proving to be a popular and refreshing English variety. Seyval has been grown in England since the 1950s and it’s one of the top English sparkling wine varieties. English Seyval Blanc is now having worldwide success and even starting to challenge champagne. We can’t wait to discover the flavours and characteristics it will develop, grown in our unique location and climate at the foot of Dartmoor.
We planted our new vines over the Easter weekend in an early heatwave! We are so lucky to have lots of friends and family who braved the heat to help us get the vines in the ground and off to a great start. Huge thanks to Gwynn, Gary and Annie, Steven and Teresa and Andy and Helen for all their help! Between us, we dug, planted, backfilled, caned and pouched all 750 vines in two days. To see more about the process of planting, see our previous blog post. We’ve taken a big step on the five-year journey to releasing our first English sparkling wine and we can’t wait to pop the cork of the first bottle!
Planting in pictures
