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Ingrid Bates (Dunleavy Vineyard) - Sustainable sips and miracle vintages: The Dunleavy Dream
44 Plays6 days ago
Tucked away in the beautiful Somerset countryside just outside Bristol, Dunleavy Vineyards is the passion project that turned biology graduate Ingrid Bates from lab coats to vineyard rows.
Owner, winemaker, delivery driver and all-round powerhouse, she’s been growing and crafting award-winning English rosé and sparkling wines on her small, sustainably farmed plot for well over a decade, a proper hands-in-the-soil dedication.
You’ll find her bottles popping up in great local restaurants, smart London wine bars and plenty of very happy fridges in between, all while she juggles family life, harvests and the occasional miracle vintage.
Today Ingrid’s here to talk planting dreams, pandemic pivots, and why English wine having its moment feels pretty bloody good.
Grab a glass; and please enjoy, Ingrid Bates
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Transcript
Introduction of Ingrid Bates
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Check On podcast. If this is your first time listening, then welcome. If you're a day one listener, then welcome back. Now, English wine is having a serious moment, beating champagne and sitting on the country's sharpest wine lists.
00:00:18
Speaker
Today we're chatting with Ingrid Bates, grower and owner of Dunleavy Vineyard just outside of Bristol.
Wine Production at Dunleavy Vineyard
00:00:24
Speaker
On a few windswept Somerset hillside, she hand grows her grapes, turning them into crisp, elegant whites and rosés and even a sparkling red that chefs pretty much fight over.
00:00:34
Speaker
Pure, precise and unmistakably English. Now while wine isn't in the kitchen, it is industry adjacent. She goes through the same brutal seasons, same obsessive detail, and same sleepless nights, praying that the rain's going to stop.
00:00:50
Speaker
So grab a glass, ideally something English, and let's get into it. Please enjoy, Ingrid Bates.
00:01:07
Speaker
Ingrid, welcome to the Check On podcast. Thank you for coming. How are you? Good. Thank you. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are? Because I think they'll be quite interested. You're a little bit industry adjacent to who we normally have on, which is really exciting.
00:01:24
Speaker
um So I'm, I describe myself as a wine producer. um I'm not the wine maker, but I grow the grapes and I run the business of selling the wine. um So I do all the marketing and obviously all the business side.
00:01:40
Speaker
um So yeah, that's what I am. you say that You say that like it's just a small feat, like it's not easy. Yeah, it's easy. Like it's nothing. Well, it's yeah, I mean, I've been doing it.
00:01:52
Speaker
It's one of those things that, you know, and when you've been doing something for a few years, it it becomes fairly sort of simple. and And yeah, I guess you just get used to it. So um I always forget that it's really interesting for other people.
00:02:06
Speaker
ah It sounds like you do sort of a lot of the whole of
Marketing and Creativity in Winemaking
00:02:11
Speaker
everything though. You know, you're growing the grapes and you you said marketing and selling the wines and stuff like that. That's, it's a lot of hats to wear.
00:02:18
Speaker
It is, which makes it, really interesting um yeah I love I think my favorite my favorite bits are what are favorite bits are the actually just working outdoors um day to day because that's really lovely um almost regardless of the weather it's just really lovely to have that in your life where you have this kind of regular thing every day and it's just you kind of um I always say I quite like being on my own. I'm just kind of on my own in a field working kind of quite simple, repetitive tasks, um which I really love, but some people don't don't love. and They think they will enjoy vineyard work and then they do and they're like oh, God, it's a bit boring. You kind of long for a bit of something to break it up, but actually it's the same thing all day. um
00:03:06
Speaker
And then I, yeah, I love selling the wine and I love the kind of psychology behind marketing.
Challenges of Vineyard Management
00:03:12
Speaker
um I mean, I haven't studied marketing, but I think I have a kind of basic idea about how it works. And I just enjoy challenging myself really to kind of try and do things differently every year um with different wine labels and different products.
00:03:29
Speaker
Um, and yeah, I'm always thinking about ah collaborating as well. I really love collaborating with different people. Um, and just, I think that's partly because of the repetitive nature.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's nice to break that up. You know, you have this kind of cycle every year with the different wines coming out at certain times. So it's nice to break that up with something creative and kind of think of ideas to make it more exciting.
00:03:56
Speaker
What does work throughout the year look like in the vineyard? Because you've obviously got sort of really set periods of time of when things happen. um it's It's the opposite times of what we would do in Australia, but what does your year look like?
00:04:10
Speaker
So at the moment, yeah, I always find that funny, you know, when you're on social media and you can I mean, it's pretty obvious, isn't it really? But still, it's always surprising that it's the opposite to what what they're doing. and So at the moment, we've had we have our harvest in kind of late September, October. And then we wait a few weeks for all the leaves to fall off the vines.
00:04:30
Speaker
And then right the way through from kind of October to April, the vines are dormant practically. um So you do your pruning and There's no particular time pressure on all the jobs that you're doing in the vineyard. So it feels quite kind of calm. Apart from obviously there's there's Christmas with in terms of selling the wine is quite busy. um But yeah, the vineyard's fairly kind of peaceful over the winter period. You're just doing the pruning and maybe other things that you might not have had time to do in the summer because you've just got more free time basically. Um, and then, um, in this, and then when the vines start growing in April, um, it's, it's, I dunno, they kind of follow this pattern every year. You don't really have any control over it. So you can kind of think, all right, here we go, here we go. And then you think, oh, ah I can't actually do anything. It's just kind of down to the weather. And, um, and then it's all about, um, there are obviously various points where you have to do things in terms of managing the vines. ah in terms of kind of tucking the growth in, shoot selecting and taking ah growth off the stems of the vines that you don't want, managing the weeds. There's all these things.
00:05:41
Speaker
I mean, because I've been doing it for a while, I kind of, every day or every week almost it it just kind of comes naturally to me I just think right I can see what my priority is this week I'm going to focus on this and then I'll do this and and you can just see what's coming and then you weirdly though you do forget every year as well and you think oh yeah I remember i remember this now this is what happens at this time of year I must remember for next year and but there's always subtle variations in when and how things happen and that's purely because of um variations
Ingrid's Journey into Vineyard Management
00:06:12
Speaker
in the weather. So like I say, you can't control the weather. So you just have to adapt all the kind of physical management of the vineyard to cope with whatever weather is happening because, you know, you get loads of rain, then you might, um or some people might get loads of mildew. I wouldn't because I've got hybrid varieties, but you might get increased grass growth or increased weed growth, which then means you have to spend ages dealing with that. Whereas if it doesn't rain,
00:06:39
Speaker
You don't even have to think about that. So it's it's kind of adapting to that really. We've just been watching Clarkson's Farm and um seeing how much the weather can impact what you're doing because you have a very short window sometimes when you need to do things. How hard is that? Like if you need to do something, and you need something to be ready by this time, but the weather is not playing ball. Do you just have to adapt each year to what's happening?
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah, basically. um Yeah, it's, um, there's certain things that like there's flowering that happens with the vines that usually happens around kind of the end of June, start of July. um and all you can do is kind of hope for very calm, warm warmth is really important. Um, and kind of still weather, but if you don't get that, there's not a huge amount you can do really. Um, I'm trying to think this, what the only time it gets stressful is where you feel like, Oh, actually i could, uh,
00:07:37
Speaker
influence this situation in some way by some sort of management. um Like if you had, um I don't know, a special tractord drivenve tractor tractor, what's the word powered sort of um people have these machines that kind of get rid of the weeds under the vines, but you can only use them in certain weather conditions or when the grass is really dry or really wet. And that's where you have to kind of work with the weather and you can only do that job when when the weather's been like this or that. But I think I've adapted my way of managing the vineyard. So it's pretty kind of flexible, really. I don't really... ah just kind of go with whatever happens. I have to put nets on the vines. That's the only...
00:08:18
Speaker
um thing that kind of varies a little bit as to when I do that every year and that's purely based on when the grapes start to change colour from white to red because then the birds see them suddenly and then they're like oh they come in and start eating them so I have to make sure that I get all those nets on before the the birds come in.
00:08:39
Speaker
When did you get into the wine industry? Uh, it was, oh, when was it? About 2000 and think it was about 2005 or six, I think.
00:08:52
Speaker
five or six i think i um, So if you could go right back, I studied biology at university in London and I moved to Bristol because I wanted to work at the BBC Natural History Unit, which was based in Bristol because I was interested in, you know, when you're like in your 20s and you think, oh, what can I what would I like to do? You've never really had a proper job apart from a part-time job. So you think, I think this is the career for me. And I managed to get a job as a junior researcher at the BBC in Bristol in the Natural History Unit.
00:09:25
Speaker
And I thought that's that would be me sorted. um But then i kind of did it for a few years and I just thought, oh no, this doesn't feel quite right. um And I just thought, what can I do instead? And it was more like,
00:09:38
Speaker
It was more of a sort of short-term answer, really. I was just thinking, what could I do that would literally just be fun that I would enjoy? um i didn't really care about how much money I earned or anything like that. It was just, I want to really enjoy my job. And um I'd heard that a friend was a gardener, had left the BBC and was now a gardener. And... um It was silly because I had ah a really amazing science degree, but I tried to find jobs as as a gardener and I was you know completely overqualified. so I couldn't get a job as a gardener. But then a friend said, oh, go and talk to this lady. She's she's a gardener now. So I went to talk to her and she gave me a job. And that was my first kind of experience of...
00:10:19
Speaker
manual labor, like working outdoors. And I was really unfit. And it was quite a shock to the system, actually, especially the cold weather. Because I think I started in the middle of winter and I was thinking, oh my goodness, this is, it felt exhausting. At the end of every day, I was exhausted. and um But it was really good fun. And I just really loved it. I felt really good, though. It felt it was a really good thing. and And ended up working, that was in a hotel with a big garden and then I ended up working at a different hotel called Thornbury Castle, which is just outside Bristol. And they had a really old vineyard and i worked there for a little while before i think the guy that was meant to be looking after the little vineyard was ill and it was looking a bit of a mess.
00:11:04
Speaker
So I, weirdly, I think I can actually remember going into the manager's office and saying, can I have a go at looking after that vineyard? don't know why I wanted to do it now thinking about it. I think it it looked kind of interesting and I didn't know anything about it. And I think it was the fact i thought it couldn't look much worse. So I didn't feel
Financial and Logistical Aspects of Vineyard Setup
00:11:25
Speaker
a huge amount of pressure to get it right.
00:11:27
Speaker
And it was quite a relaxed place to work. So those two things together, I didn't think, oh my goodness, I've got to really make a success of this. I just thought, well, you know, what's the worst that can happen? And um he let me have a go.
00:11:38
Speaker
And I just really enjoyed it. And I got somebody from a bigger vineyard to kind of show me the ropes, show me the basics. And then it just carried on from there, really. Was that your first introduction into into vines then, I guess?
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, basically. And so I've come at the whole thing from kind of horticultural angle. I've never... i never I never drank wine until... I'm trying to think how old I was. Probably like late 20s even. I used to... i don't know why. used to drink a bit of cider um and Alco Pops in the night. It was really classy. and um But I just...
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, so I wasn't coming at it from that angle. And a lot of people do come at viticultural winemaking from that's where they come. They love wine, whereas i i still don't describe myself as a wine expert. I know ah a fair bit about English wine and the English wine industry um or British wine, um but not about world wines. um I actually just drink a lot of my own wine still. I'm not very adventurous. um So, yeah, that was my first experience really.
00:12:51
Speaker
And then how did that turn into where you are now then? Because that there has to be something in the middle. That's a giant leap to go from looking after someone that you thought you couldn't do anything. No, I started one week and then here I am now. No, I am so yeah i looked after that little vineyard at Thornbury Castle ah for a couple of years and then there was another little vineyard down in the next village where a chap had set it up. Actually, well what ended up happening is there, I think...
00:13:21
Speaker
three or four different vineyards where the same thing had happened. a guy had retired, was really into wine, had set up a vineyard in their retirement. and then passed away.
00:13:32
Speaker
so their wives were left going, oh my goodness, I've got this vineyard. I've got to look after it. and I'm not really, I don't really want to consult. it people People will look at a vineyard and they can find it quite overwhelming. They look at it and they see, oh my goodness, I've got to do all this work. So I ended up um and helping to look after these vineyards for various people. um And ah so ended up looking after, yeah, these little kind of hobby vineyards all around Bristol in amazing locations.
00:14:00
Speaker
It was is really fun, actually. um And then one day, i forget exactly why or how, I had a bit of ah an epiphany, and I thought, I'm going to do it for myself. um I can't remember. I think I'd had no interest in sort of particularly pushing myself, and then suddenly i wanted to push myself a bit more. I can't really explain why. um And I started looking into the kind of business side of things a bit more and working out if I could do it.
00:14:30
Speaker
financially and I was only I think
Expansion and Wine Production Techniques
00:14:32
Speaker
27 at that point and I was obviously working as a gardener I wasn't like hugely wealthy um so I tried to start saving up some money because i was thinking well I've got to buy some land and i i started looking in newspapers and things to think you know where can I buy some land and all the bits I was seeing were just really terrible scrappy little bits of land and um And then the same lady that had given me my first gardening job, um so by that point, she was running an organic veg growing business and she was renting some land from this guy. And she said, oh why don't you come and talk to my landlord? Maybe he he'll rent you out. so He'll rent you some land. And I said, I don't really want to rent because it's kind of a long-term commitment. But then I thought, well, I haven't really, I'll go and see him. i have a chat with him.
00:15:19
Speaker
Didn't really think much of it. Went to see him. And then I just kind of carried on looking to try and buy land. But I realized it was just going to be impossible, basically, unless I had a lot more money. Yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker
And so i I just went for it and I ended up renting the field next to her. um And that's the rent. I still rent that field now, however many years down the line, like 18 years down the line, I think.
00:15:44
Speaker
um So that's how I set up my own thing. And I just got slightly obsessed, I think is the word, with the idea alls creating this brand.
00:15:57
Speaker
And i I really loved... um chapel down The Chapel Down Rosé, I loved the simplicity of the whole product and I loved the idea of rosé. I wasn't really drinking much rosé at this point. but I thought I'd love to create a product like that. I saw it as this almost like this creative thing. um So that was what was in my mind the whole time when I was setting things up.
00:16:21
Speaker
how How expensive is it to set up a vineyard though? Like, I guess it's depending on the size of it and everything, but for for the size that you were looking to get, is it extremely expensive? Because in my head, it's very expensive. It's extremely expensive. No, it's, well, it's a really weird thing setting up a vineyard.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's like, What can I relate it to? was going to say having a baby or buying a house. It's something you don't do very often. So it's a weird thing because you have to make all these decisions that have these really long-term implications and you don't really know what you're doing because you've never done it before.
00:16:59
Speaker
um And then after, or like i always think of when I watch Grand Designs, it reminds me of when I set up the vineyard because people go, how do you want to do this? How do you want to do that? And I'm like, well, I don't know. I've never done this before. You tell me. and um and then after you think, oh God, I wish I'd done it like this. And it's,
00:17:14
Speaker
And even if you did like a whole load of research and you thought you had it all mapped out, you'd inevitably still make a wrong decision somewhere because every field is so different. And so you don't really know a field and how it works until you've spent a lot of time in it. And and you'll always make mistakes. So you just have to kind of adapt.
00:17:34
Speaker
But um I've forgotten your question now. Yeah. How expensive is it to set up Oh, expensive. That was it. it costs, oh gosh, I can't remember. So each vine costs about two pounds.
00:17:48
Speaker
um These like now about two pounds. There's no VAT on vines. um And the posts are, well, when I set up my rented field, that was about two and a half acres.
00:18:02
Speaker
I think the posts, I managed to get like a really really good deal. don't know. It was like, it was a just under 10 grand, but now I think it would be a lot more because it's all about the price of metal and and that fluctuates quite a lot depending on supply and demand. So um I remember, yeah yeah, I remember when I went to buy my post, they were like, well, maybe wait a year and then the price of metal might come, go down a little bit. um So I'm just thinking, I just planted a small area this spring and if you can plant them by hand, so basically you Your costs are the actual vines, preparing the land. So like you might get a farm contractor to plough the land or power harrow it or something, or not.
00:18:45
Speaker
Or you might pay people to plant the vines. um And then you've got your posts. And actually, the most expensive thing is the posts, if you particularly if you've got metal posts. um So you could easily spend a few thousand on labour as well.
00:19:00
Speaker
That's not really... I'm trying to think of an actual figure. I think... Maybe somewhere between 30 and 40 grand, not an acre, to set it up. Something like that. But like i said I've only done it once.
00:19:12
Speaker
but um And my new one, I haven't put the posts in yet, so I've i' just started planting, and that's the cheap bit. So... In terms of timeline, right, so you you have to get the land, you have yeah to prepare the land, then you have to plant your vines and the posts. From when you've planted the vines, what's the time period? How long are you talking before you can make your bottle of wine?
00:19:38
Speaker
It's um ah a long time. it's Well, it depends how good your soil is. or not necessarily good, but it's kind of how easily can the roots go out into that soil. If you've got heavy clay, that might be like a really nutritious, good soil, um but it might just take those little vines four years or even five years to kind of really get their roots in.
00:20:04
Speaker
And that's reflected in how big the trunk is of the vine and how thick it is and you need them to get to this certain size before they're kind of strong enough to start harvesting grapes um so if you've got really lovely soil that the vines really like and there's no nutrient deficiencies in some people you could almost harvest some grapes in the second year or third year but you shouldn't really in the second year it should be later than that you need to give them a bit more time really So you've got that and then you can you can harvest and you can make wine. But then if you're going to age your wine as well, you've got another however many years on top of that.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. So I don't really age the wine, but obviously most people do. and I guess it depends what kind of wines you're making. um But yeah, it's it's a not.
00:20:57
Speaker
It's ah very much a kind of labor of love, I suppose you would call it. Or it's weird because I'm actually really impatient. I'm a really impatient person and I like to like just get on, right, let's do this, let's do that. um So I always think it's kind of funny that I'm working in this thing where everything takes ages and it's really slow.
00:21:16
Speaker
but um yeah, it takes a long time, but I don't know. I guess you just think of once you get, once it starts, once the process starts, you always have a new wine coming into production and you don't think about, you know, I've got some that are in the, in the various tanks now. I don't think about them because ah I've got ones that I'm selling at the moment and I know they'll be ready later down the line and and and because I'm a small producer as well, I just, I said a minute ago, I don't um leave things to age that long. I tend, I don't have sort of massive, um what's the word? ah What's the word I'm thinking of, you know, like a big backlog of, of stuff that I can just leave sitting there. I have to actually keep it moving and keep it selling.
00:22:00
Speaker
um So I tend to kind of turn things around fairly
Community and Industry Insights
00:22:03
Speaker
quickly. So I, With my sparkling wines, I don't really leave them on the lease for that long. um I experiment, again, because I'm not from ah ah what a traditional wine background, I experimented with just leaving the sparkling wines on the lease for kind of six to 12 months.
00:22:18
Speaker
And I thought, I wonder if people will say, oh, it's, you know, it's just not quite right. But actually, people seem to really love it. It's just a slightly different kind of product. It's it's not quite as dry. It's just a little bit more fruit first.
00:22:30
Speaker
um But it works really well. So I've carried on doing that now. But for ah for for a different vineyard, like you you could be looking at potentially, you know, eight years or something like that before you, from planting but until you can sell your first bottle of wine. Like that's that's a crazy long time.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I think also i've I've heard people laughing about, you know, having a business plan at the start of setting up their vineyard. And that's another whole, you know, if you are if you were looking at things in terms of profits and losses and, you know, proper profits once you've made back all the money you spent at the start. that's Yeah, minimum 10 years.
00:23:11
Speaker
um Yeah, it takes a while. So um because you have to expend so much before you start selling. i always think about that with other businesses. Their businesses are very much um the main emphasis of their business at the start is the selling.
00:23:29
Speaker
And that is their business. Whereas with a vineyard, you've got this thing that you're kind of nurturing and you're kind of having to invest all this time and thought in it. and And the whole time you're kind of thinking, oh, my goodness, I hope this is going to work. You've got no idea what your product is at the end that you're going to sell.
00:23:45
Speaker
So it's kind of funny. um What are the variety ah of wines that you sell? What's on your range? So um for the first few years, we just made Still Roseau.
00:23:58
Speaker
And then gradually, i kind of ah built up a kind of customer base within Bristol. um And then we started making a little bit more wine.
00:24:10
Speaker
And sometimes I would buy in some grapes from my neighbours because I couldn't figure out a way of producing more grapes myself. So I experimented a bit with that. um And that's why I've always been on the lookout to buy more land because I didn't really want to have to do that, but I couldn't figure out another way of doing it.
00:24:27
Speaker
um So yeah, I make about just over 6,000 bottles of still rose a a year. And I usually, what I try and do is make as much as I can sell because I haven't got like a big farm with loads of buildings. So I haven't, I can't necessarily well I couldn't at the start I couldn't store that much wine so I just try and make what I can sell and just keep the whole thing kind of going round and round every year so make about six thousand bottles six and a half thousand bottles of still rose and then every year I just kind of I work out at harvest time
00:25:02
Speaker
like what's around you know are there loads of a particular type of grape um and then I try and always make ah some sparkling white white wine with my Sauval Blanc and i experimented with a sparkling red as well and then I've tried doing a sparkling rosé as well just to see if I could gauge kind of um what people preferred really I'm always interested to see what people like and it's never what you think it's interesting It's quite unusual to see a sparkling red in England.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah, so... A lot of people say, oh, I tried one actually in Australia or an Italian one. and it And it's quite, I think, from what actually I've tried a few myself, they they're quite different to mine. They're quite dark and sometimes quite sweet. Whereas mine is, so we make it, I only grow these two varieties. ah They both have really bad, not cool sounding names. ah One's called Saval Blanc and one's called Regent.
00:26:02
Speaker
um And they're both hybrids, so they tend not to get mildew. You don't have to spray them. They just kind of do their thing. And they're really versatile in that you can... So I make this i can make the rosé with a combination of those two grapes. I can make my sparkling white with the S'Val Blanc and sparkling red with just the Regent because when you chop open a Regent grape, the flesh is actually red.
00:26:28
Speaker
um So the juice that comes out is really dark red. And... it was I used to supply Viniteka, who are a big, I know, restaurant slash wine bar chain in London. And ah Charlie, one of the owners of that company at the time, said, oh, could you make a sparkling red? And I said, oh i don't know. I'll ask Steve, the winemaker. And... um and Steve is quite risk averse and he said oh i know I don't know about that I've never I've not done that before but he said let me get back to you and he went off to chat to some of his winemaking friends about it and he came back and said yeah I think we can do it let's give it a go and um so all we do is we just press the regent grapes and then we just make it as though you would make I mean i this that I think there are things he does that are different when you get down to the minutiae of the winemaking but The basic initial process is the same as making a sparkling white in that we just press the grapes and the juice that comes out is the colour that the wine will be. And we don't put them the juice in contact with the skins, so it's not like a normal red wine. and But we just make sure we use very heavily pigmented grapes so that the colour comes out. and you And because they're quite pigmented grapes, you get you do get that kind of red flavour as well.
00:27:46
Speaker
um But it's quite a light sparkling red. It's quite dry. I would say it's a bit like a really dark rosé, really. But I really love it. really I really like it.
00:27:57
Speaker
That's really cool. um Yeah, I think sparkling reds, definitely I've tried it in Australia and like you said, a couple of Italian. And the ones that I've tried have been, they've been pretty big, bold reds.
00:28:10
Speaker
Rockford is probably the one that springs to my mind the most from Australia, Barossa Valley. yeah And Barossa Valley is notoriously quite big red wines. Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting to hear about one that's a bit lighter and has a little bit more finesse to it.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think, um yeah, I'm not a massive fan of really dark, full-bodied, any type of red wine. um So i I didn't want to make, yeah, I didn't want to make a ah sparkling wine that was like that. I just thought, oh no, oh no that'd be terrible. But um I just, yeah, I could just see it working. And I remember actually the first rosé we produced back in like 2013 was,
00:28:55
Speaker
inadvertently came out quite dark and it was quite fun and quite different and I really liked it and I think we were kind of had that in the back of our minds when we first made i quite like those kind of Austrian reds as well you know those really light ones um I suppose you shouldn't really make things just for your own enjoyment should you really but it's hard to get enthus enthusiastic about something that you wouldn't like yourself I think It's the same for me in cooking. I struggle to make things that I don't like. Yeah. but We're cooking for our guests, but if it's something that I don't like, um I never fully believe in it. So I agree. yeah You do have to like what you're making.
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah, because I guess you're the one selling it. Well, you're not. I guess you're selling it, aren't you? Because you're putting it down on the table. You wouldn't put it down and go, oh, yeah. No. You have to believe. Yeah.
00:29:51
Speaker
You have to ah yeah believe in what you're doing, don't you? Yeah, absolutely.
00:29:57
Speaker
what did it What did the early days of of you starting your vineyard look like? You mentioned didn't fully know. I was crying. um yeah ah What do you mean in terms of the the vineyard or the selling of the wine? um Both. like when you What was your vision when you first started planting? Did you know what you wanted it to become or were you sort of just seeing how it went?
00:30:21
Speaker
Well, I'm trying to remember now. i'm trying to remember back. i remember being absolutely terrified and I was quite surprised at how terrified I was because I'd looked after all these other people's vineyards And then I thought, well, that's easy. I know what I'm doing. I'll just do my own. And then I planted it and I looked at this thing and I thought, oh my God, this is really so terrifying. What have I done?
Strategies for Vineyard Challenges
00:30:45
Speaker
And i I wanted to actually run away from it and hide in a corner, but I i realized I couldn't.
00:30:52
Speaker
I had to carry on and ah make the best of it. But um yeah, it's quite a daunting thing. um But once you get into it, it's great. And yeah, I just, I really loved it. And yeah,
00:31:03
Speaker
I think it was just getting used to just the kind of, I think I was used to these very small vineyards looking after them. And suddenly this, my vineyard was a bit bigger.
00:31:15
Speaker
and I think what happened at the same time, if this might make it make more sense is I just had a baby. So i I'd done these two things at the same time, which with hindsight wasn't the best idea. So I was being pulled in sort of two different directions.
00:31:30
Speaker
um And I wasn't even thinking about selling the wine at that point. I was just thinking, well, just get through the next couple of years, really. And I keep this vineyard from just keep it looking tidy and keep the vines okay. And then we'll kind of think about the the selling of the wine later.
00:31:47
Speaker
um I mean, I was thinking about it at the same time. I was thinking about it and I was kind of planning ahead about you know, how the labels might look and things like that. But um I didn't actually have to do that for a a good few years.
00:32:00
Speaker
do you Do you approach it um sort of more like a scientist or more like a farmer? Or do you wear both hats at the same time? and I suppose i was just thinking, what is it? it is a about how is a farmer different to a scientist? Maybe they might be the same. I think I approach things in quite a methodical sort of way. I like to... I like to... um get all the kind of facts in my head and then, yeah, work out a kind of priority. i like structure and order. And, um yeah, I like to give myself kind of an order of things to do. Obviously, that's quite reassuring. Otherwise, you'd be going all over the place and being really chaotic. You can't really be chaotic. You have to kind of focus on something. um
00:32:49
Speaker
Otherwise, yeah, it would be chaos. But I don't really know. I don't really know how a farmer would would approach things. I think the thing about farmers is they've grown up, usually they've they've grown up in a farm and and everything's kind of almost second nature to them. They have that confidence perhaps that they know what they're doing. Whereas I perhaps didn't at the start of things. I'd looked after these little vineyards, but having your own is it does feel very different when it's your own money and your own risk, I suppose.
00:33:22
Speaker
Um, but yeah, you just got to keep going really. And it's interesting talking to, it's one of those things, once you've been doing it for a few years, you kind of forget that stage. And then, you know, we're all part of those's various kind of, uh, national and local wine, um, associations. And so it's always funny talking to the new people. who come in and then they'll sort of look at me as this person who know I or you know what you're doing and you you and then you suddenly remember you think oh god yeah I was like that once and um you gradually sort of figure out what you're doing and then it just becomes like second nature are there any early mistakes that you made that sort of turned into really big lessons uh yes I
00:34:10
Speaker
I'm trying to think which ones I want to tell you about. there Well, the first thing I did that i always, i still thought about that a lot recently because i was ah planting this new small area.
00:34:24
Speaker
I was told at the start, what you have to do when you're preparing your field is you spray the area where you're going to plant with weed killer to clear it. They spray it, just spray it off. They say, spray it off and then everything dies. And then it's easy to plough and power harrow and just prepare that soil. um So I did that.
00:34:45
Speaker
um And then what happened, was what grew back? I think when you kill off the base, the natural kind of, i don't know what the word is, the flora that that are there, what tends to then grow back are these kind of monster weeds. um And you totally disrupt the natural thing that was there. Naturally, things do gradually creep back, but you've disrupted this kind of natural balance, basically. Yeah. So when I first planted my rented field, um that was kind of what happened. And that that made that was actually very, very stressful but because I just had this baby this baby. And then I went back there and that it was full of thistles and docks.
00:35:26
Speaker
And it was just horrible, horrible to look at this. And I thought, oh, no this is awful. And um yeah, so I didn't make that mistake the second time around. I did things really differently and um just kind of rotavated strips. So I realized it's quite...
00:35:41
Speaker
It's quite important to maintain whatever is there naturally, as long as you kind of like what's there already. um Things that aren't too kind of fast, grasses that are kind of quite gentle and not too, I don't know what the word is, they won't overwhelm everything.
00:35:56
Speaker
um And you won't get like massive docks or massive thistles because they've not had a chance to kind of get in there. So yeah, it's just a different approach. It sounds like a ah nicer approach as well than sort of putting weed killer everywhere.
00:36:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. um It's a funny thing, though. Vines do need... um Weed killer has its place sometimes, I think, or, you know, sometimes... Sorry, the dog is next to me. um it's Young vines do...
00:36:27
Speaker
ah People always say, oh you know when I go to France or Spain or whatever, I see these vines on the hillside and there's no water. They're almost growing out of the rock. But actually, young vines in this country, it's probably to do with the root stocks that we use. um It's hard to explain, but um they do need a lot of water and they're very, very easily outcompeted.
00:36:47
Speaker
if If you had a young vine in the ground with grass all around it, it would really, really struggle to grow. Whereas if the vine was maybe like... even five years old, it might struggle a bit to compete. But once it gets a bit older, it's kind of okay because it's got its roots down deep. But for the first couple of years, you do really have to help them quite a lot to compete with the with the weeds.
00:37:08
Speaker
So yeah, weeds are a massive um weeds. you know Other plants are a big deal for vineyards and how to deal with them because nobody wants to use weed killer anymore. But it's... um there's not there aren't yeah there's lots There's not great alternatives sometimes and people try, but it's quite hard work and labour intensive.
00:37:29
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like every industry though, you need there are some trade-offs that you need to make. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, you just have to yeah go with your gut feeling, I think, about what's right.
00:37:41
Speaker
It almost sounds like nurturing children. So in a sense, yeah a sense you were raising a baby and raising baby vines at the same time and make everyone survive. yeah ah Yeah. i'm not Yeah. I'm not sure if I did a great job of either. But yeah, no, it it was... um Yeah, it's funny looking back, isn't it? I don't know why. I think a lot of people do that, don't they? When they have a baby, they they embark on some ridiculous mission at the same time and make their lives like extra stressful.
00:38:10
Speaker
ah But you don't realize, I think at the time, how um when you have a baby, it does really change your life, doesn't it? But I didn't realize that. but I thought it'd be easy. must have been a lot to balance, though, balancing the both.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, it was. And it obviously that continues for, it's not just for Christmas, the baby carries on forever. And when, yeah, it's um yeah until they go to school, really, it's um unless you pay for a lot of childcare. Yeah, you have to balance all of that stuff.
00:38:45
Speaker
So it's, um anyway, it's fine. That was a long time ago.
Sustainability in Vineyard Practices
00:38:50
Speaker
i don't want to think about it. You're on the other side now. Yeah. god
00:38:59
Speaker
Excuse me. Whereabouts is your vineyard located? um so I always, for however many years, 17 years, I had this one site that I rented in North Somerset um near a village in a village called Rington, which is just, you go kind of past Bristol Airport, down the hill on the other side, and it's down there. and So i I live in the centre of Bristol. I always say that because I don't know why. I feel...
00:39:28
Speaker
It's almost part of my identity. I really love the city and I love living in the city and then having this ah reverse commute where I go out of the city and work in the countryside. So for years, that's how it's always been. But i've all the way through, I've been looking to try and buy some land or find some land to buy.
00:39:46
Speaker
And yeah, that's just taken absolutely forever. But I finally just... um bought some lands and I completed on the purchase, I think a couple of months ago. So I finally have two sites now and the other site is in completely, not completely the opposite direction, but it's out towards Bath.
00:40:04
Speaker
So each day ah i look at the weather and I think, oh, which I've got various jobs to do at different sites. And I kind of figure out if it's raining, I go to my North Somerset one because I have some shipping containers where you can the dog can basically go and hide in the shipping container if it's raining. Whereas if I go to my new field, I don't have any shelter or anything um apart from a car. So it's just that. That's just my reason for choosing, really, ah ah depending on what I'm doing.
00:40:36
Speaker
um So I just decide i either go to one site or the other. I try not to go to both on the same day because it's actually quite a long distance between the two. Are there any other vineyards around where you are?
00:40:47
Speaker
ah Yes. So in yeah in North Somerset, I've got my friends Sandy from Oldwick Billard and Luke from Sutton Ridge. And weirdly, we all planted around the same year. We all use the same winemaker. So ah they very much those those two very much kind of grew up in that area.
00:41:09
Speaker
You know, they're very well connected to that area. And it' it's taken me a while, but I I know a lot of people in that locally there now as well. and But we're really good friends. We've become really good friends and we have a WhatsApp group. um And there's other vineyards as well. ah There's quite a few around Bristol. um and But near my new site, there is, I'm trying to think if there's anyone. No, there isn't. Well, there's somebody.
00:41:34
Speaker
i can't remember what they're called. They're not really selling wine yet. They're just a kind of small setup thing and You know, lots of people set vineyards up and then never even never even get around to selling the wine because they find it harder than they think.
00:41:48
Speaker
um So, yeah, people are always setting them up and then and then it doesn't really come to anything. So, yeah, it's a tricky old thing. was not Was that hard then when you first set up your vineyard? Did you have a network of people around you or was it kind of just you and you?
00:42:06
Speaker
It was, no, i was I felt very much on my own. I had i did, i guess it's like anything, you ah find a few people that you feel you can turn to for help with that kind of thing. It's a kind of weird thing.
00:42:26
Speaker
with um I guess it happens in any industry where new people start up and I still get it now. People contact you and I'm planting a vineyard around the corner for you. Can I come and...
00:42:37
Speaker
can I come and talk to you about it? And you go, oh yeah, great. But it's a kind of weird thing because they're also your competitors. um But, yeah, there's we have our local kind of wine association and we all meet up, not that often, maybe once or twice a year, um and you can ask questions. When I started, we didn't have any of this. We have a Facebook group and a WhatsApp group, which is actually really, really helpful. We didn't have that when I first started. We just had this...
00:43:05
Speaker
awful um email forum where you'd post a question and you'd get ah awful answers or people, you know, you can imagine. um And it was it was almost like sticking your head above a parapet going, oh, look at me, I don't know anything. And then people would tell you how it is. So, yeah, it was.
00:43:23
Speaker
But I think you find your own, you find a few people that you feel you can turn to for help. And then then you keep going back to those same people. um But yeah, there's lots, it is a nice industry. There are lots of eccentric characters.
00:43:36
Speaker
but It must have been difficult though. Like when you, you know, you said you didn't know a lot about it other than managing other people's vineyards. It's not something that you grew up in is what I mean. um Oh, I see. And to know not have that sort of network of people because you didn't grow up in it.
00:43:52
Speaker
Who did you turn to when you needed some advice? um i am I can't remember. i i think I did ask a couple of other vineyard fight wine growers. I'm trying to think now who asked. Probably just literally one or two people. I could ask my winemaker, I guess, but none of them would tell me about how to sell the wine.
00:44:15
Speaker
I just kind of had a go and just kind of ah Yeah, played it by ear really. um Yeah, just I just figured it out for myself. um I guess nobody can see what you're doing. So it's not like everyone's looking at you going, oh, you're doing that wrong. You just kind of give it a go and see what happens and see what works.
00:44:34
Speaker
um That's very much the way I do things. You must be very proud though to have have figured out a lot of it by yourself and have kind of made this thing by yourself. You must be extremely proud of yourself.
00:44:48
Speaker
um well weirdly no I don't really think about it I just I don't really think about it I just do it and um yeah I guess yeah I guess sometimes I think like I say when you look back when you see new people starting and then you see them looking to you for advice that's when you realize oh that's how people see me I don't see myself like that I think it's that I think everyone has that little bit probably, don't they, with their business?
00:45:15
Speaker
um But yeah you just yeah, you just learn over the years and then it all becomes kind of second nature, really. But every year is different. So I'm still learning all the time. um Yeah, constantly, really.
00:45:28
Speaker
Talk to me about the difference in wines sort of varying from countries because England is starting to put itself on the map, but definitely, you know, like, especially with sparkling.
00:45:40
Speaker
What is the difference and what makes English wine different from, say, a French wine or from an Australian wine? um Well, I guess I'm trying to think how to answer this one.
00:45:54
Speaker
I guess I'm trying to figure... How would it be different? Well, I mean, there's so many... days I mean, wine is just so complex anyway, isn't it? Like even just within Rosé, there's such a huge variation. Like we were saying with the sparkling reds, there's huge variation even within that tiny little group of wines.
00:46:12
Speaker
i suppose... i Yeah, I think the key, I've just answered my own question in my head there. Our industry is quite different. The actual wines, I'm not sure how they are different. I think, I guess they're a bit lighter in terms of their flavours.
00:46:29
Speaker
And we're still, the cool thing about our industry is with the wines and with everything, we we haven't become entrenched in our ways of doing things yet.
00:46:39
Speaker
So it's tricky because you see people trying to latch on to these old old world wine thing saying oh we're like the French because of this we're like this country because of that and actually what makes us really cool is that we don't have those attachments to that that old way of doing things we can do everything ah in a new way and make our own rules where at the moment we're quite lucky because we don't have that many rules apart from obviously basic basic food standards rules but we don't have all the rules and the constraints that
00:47:14
Speaker
they might have in France for example about what you're allowed to call your wines we're still actually quite lucky we were quite flexible um in the system that we've got and that's constantly changing so I think over the years that will change again but we're very much people are very much experimenting with what works um and what we can with the with the reds with people are starting to make more and more reds in this country which is quite interesting and the temptation again is to try and recreate what's been done in other countries. And actually, I think the key thing is to figure out what we do differently and create our own kind of USP.
00:47:50
Speaker
um And I think a lot of the marketing has gone into so sparkling white wines historically in this country, because partly because that's where the larger businesses were in the Southeast and and they had more money for marketing and that's what they were producing because I think they thought...
00:48:11
Speaker
you know it's a bit you can say oh it's a bit like champagne the terroir and um maybe they thought there'd be a higher profit in sparkling wine as well um but actually i think what people noticed during covid and it was quite funny in the southwest we have a ah lot but historically we had a lot more still wine producers and i think initially there was a little bit of a like oh the people in the southeast with their sparkling wines and we're here doing a mixture of wines in the southwest but what happened sort of during COVID is I think the emphasis shifted and some a lot of people were saying well actually these still wines they're quite good and people are really interested in them and and actually you can sell them for quite a decent price and then and and a lot of us were like well yeah we know that already but it was like ah the penny dropped and I think there's a lot of really interesting still wines being produced now and and that's been really interesting so our industry is kind of
00:49:04
Speaker
adapting and changing the whole time I guess based on demand isn't it really um and and it's quite a always always end up saying the word faff it's quite a faff to make a sparkling wine and I think people realize you know if you can make a still wine fairly quickly and sell it for almost the same price as a sparkling wine that's great you know why would you want to go through all that hassle of making a sparkling wine which is really expensive to make and takes ages do we have the Do we have the climate here to make red wine? Because i I think that's probably what a lot of people think is that England makes sparkling wine because that's all they have the climate and potentially the terroir for. Is that true or is that not?
00:49:51
Speaker
It's all to do with, i' it's a combination of things. I think but I've noticed a massive shift even just in the last few years that I've been doing it in terms of the grape varieties that are available um because our industry is young all the kind of plant breeding and the um the nurseries that develop these new varieties it's not genetic engineering it's literally just plant breeding um have been we used the the vine varieties that we use have been developed for
00:50:26
Speaker
bigger wine industries in say Germany or France, we just kind of try their varieties to see if they work for us. um But what's happening, like this variety I started using Regent, that wasn't around when I first started. um And it's so much better than, well, I would say it's so much better than the original varieties that were available when I first planted. So i I think if you can get varieties that ripen,
00:50:52
Speaker
you know, they all ripen at different times. Some of them will ripen like at the end of September and some don't ripen until I don't know, like mid November. So if you can get red varieties that have a real depth of color and flavor, and we'll get to that point before the end of the growing season in this country, then I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to make a really amazing sparkling one. I guess maybe you do need a bit more of a powerful hot summer to kind of really get those sugar levels really high, um, to create like a really kind of high impact red, for example.
00:51:25
Speaker
But, um, and I think anything's possible, um but I guess we'll slightly we'll always veer slightly more towards the lighter reds. um But again, with the whites, the same thing applies, really. I think as we're getting kind of better grape varieties, becoming more available, it just gives you a lot more scope for um creating more interesting wines with more depth of flavour.
00:51:52
Speaker
Do you want different um sort of, I want to say microclimates, but it's maybe not the right thing. Do you want different temperatures and um different levels for different grape varieties? Like do white and red, when you're making a white wine or a red wine, do they want different things? or No, no, you just want the same things. They're all the same.
00:52:14
Speaker
They're just different colours. The main thing that people don't realise, always get people saying, oh, you've had a lovely summer this year, oh, we've had a terrible summer, haven't we? But actually the key thing, I would say, the winemaker would disagree, but from a growing perspective, I want the grapes to be ripe, but I want there to be lots of grapes. That's my priority. um And that...
00:52:40
Speaker
happens that whether there's lots or hardly any grapes, that's all down to a kind of two week window when the vines flower, um kind of at the end of June and the start of July. um So if you get wet and cold weather, you just get really poor fruit set, you know, the little flowers, they don't turn into little grapes.
00:53:01
Speaker
that's really disappointing because once that period's passed, that's it. You know, if you've only got one shot at it every summer.
COVID-19 Impact and Adaptability
00:53:07
Speaker
um I've forgotten the question now. No, but i um you just said something interesting, actually, is that you you obviously want more grapes because more grapes means more wine. You said that your winemaker wouldn't agree with you. Where's yeah difference between opinions?
00:53:23
Speaker
uh because he would say well I said some I think if we were talking about frosts because if you get we often in the UK actually one of the biggest limiting factors is some I don't want to tempt fate but the last two years we haven't had a a frost problem but in previous years we've had some terrible things where the vines would start growing in April and then they you know you get your green growth and it might even be that long and then you get a frost at the end of April it's so disheartening and um It's almost better if they all completely die, but sometimes you get a situation where they half die, half don't, and then you end up with growth on the vines that's kind of a month apart. So you might end up with grapes that are really randomly, you know, you might have to pick on two separate grapes.
00:54:09
Speaker
periods if you see what I mean but um that frost can really disrupt everything and if if your if your growth at the start of the season gets knocked back straight away you have to wait for three weeks for the vines to throw out new shoots um and then you might still get a decent amount of grapes because what actually might happen then is there'll be they'll be starting to grow say you know three weeks later by which time it will be mid-summer so when they flower you'll get an amazing fruit set but then the winemake, I was laughing about this with my winemaker because he was like, yeah, but don't forget that when you get to harvest, they might not be ready. And i was like, oh yeah, it' so obvious. I knew that, but I'd be like, yeah, great. Loads of grapes. And, um, but he wants them to be, you know, absolutely perfect in terms of the sugar and the acidity. But I know he can do quite a lot in the winery.
00:55:02
Speaker
i think, um, It's ah you can I can't remember. it wasn't me. I'm probably quoted misquoting this now, but it's something to do with you can make it like a terrible wine from amazing grapes.
00:55:14
Speaker
I can't remember the end of the quote, but it's basically something along the lines of you can make fairly good wines from not great grapes. um Yeah, it's um the grapes don't have to be amazing to make good wine, but it helps, you know. Yeah, for sure.
00:55:30
Speaker
I wonder, because I i remember learning that um some vineyards, they will cut off some of their grapes before they shoot to concentrate the the ones that do end up um going to the winemaker. they kind of put their vines under a little bit of stress so that those grapes that they have left will have a sort of really intense flavor. Am I misremembering that or is that something that people do?
00:55:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So that that white variety that I grow, Saval Blanc, is very high yielding. So some varieties, you wouldn't do this with some, well, I don't think you do it with something like Pinot Noir, which is naturally very low yielding. You'd be like clinging on to anything that you've got. You'd be like, oh, thank God. Whereas with something like Saval, it will just chuck out loads and yeah and it'll be like covered in grapes. But unless it...
00:56:20
Speaker
You have to kind of judge it. if you If you're confident that that's all happened at the point where it's meant to happen and you know they can ripen, then you might leave them on. But if you think there's too many, um you would then go along and cut off. I forget whether it's...
00:56:36
Speaker
it would be, so when the stem is growing, yeah, so you'd get, I think the maximum is three flower trusses. So you've got your stem, you'd have one, the first flower truss here, then another one higher up, and then another one. So this one at the top would be the oldest. So this would flower first, and this one second, and that one third. So if you were going along,
00:56:57
Speaker
chopping off some grapes, you chop off the yeah you chop off these youngest the youngest ones because basically they might not have time to ripen anyway and it would just concentrate all the nutrients that are being sucked up by the roots would go into those remaining ones so you can maximise the potential of what you've left basically.
00:57:18
Speaker
It's all kind of common sense but um yeah you have to know understand what you're doing at the same time. It must be a little bit kind of not counterintuitive, but um sort of as the as the grower, you want a high yield and you you want to sort of get as much as you can from the grapes, you know, from a business perspective and from a growing perspective. Well, yeah, yeah, you do I know I'm not really a big fan of chopping off grapes. i really I do it accidentally sometimes. I'm like, oh, God.
00:57:50
Speaker
because they just plop to the ground. And I think, oh, I always always say, every year when you get the grapes, to me, it's always like a minor miracle. just ah i think it's amazing that it that it works, and that they're there and that they grow. I just think it's incredible.
00:58:04
Speaker
um watching that happen every year um is such a simple thing and yet you shouldn't shouldn't really take it for granted you know any fruit that's how I sound like some kind of weirdo but it is amazing isn't it that these things actually happen without you having to do anything I think it must be very satisfying to look down and see sort of look down the row and see lots of grapes and be like okay this is going to happen it's going to all work out this year Yeah, no, definitely. And um as you get into doing it, you become more confident in terms of... Well, I used to grow Pinot Noir and you know some years you would get... they They required very exact conditions for the...
00:58:49
Speaker
flowers to turn into grapes. And if they didn't get those perfect conditions, you would get a very disappointing fruit set. um And then even once you got a really good fruit set, you would look at those grapes and you'd think, oh no, because then what might happen is you'd get mildew and you would lose the whole lot. and that that was really, really stressful. That was the one thing I found incredibly stressful because you could never quite relax. You never thought, oh no Whereas with the hybrid varieties, once you've got...
00:59:18
Speaker
um you know, once you've got your grapes there, you can pretty much guarantee that nothing's going to happen to them. The only thing that might happen is animals might eat them. But then, so I i counteract that by putting um these nets over the gra over the red grapes because they don't seem, the birds don't seem to try and eat the white grapes weirdly.
00:59:40
Speaker
i' I'm assuming it's because they can't see them um or they don't notice them. So I just have to net the red grapes. And um yeah, there's nothing really else to worry about, really. So it's quite nice.
00:59:52
Speaker
Do you work quite closely with your winemaker then? um It's a sort of, was talking about this, week I talk about this a lot in that We are... I feel feel like we are close and yet actually we never talk to each other. But but he's there. like we I think that's partly the fact he that's his personality...
01:00:14
Speaker
We each do our thing. We talk to each other, weirdly, only a couple of times a year. but that maybe that's because I've been going for a while now. So we're in this kind of set thing where he knows what he's doing.
01:00:26
Speaker
I know what I'm... Well, I know what I'm doing, hopefully. He hopefully knows what he's doing. And, yeah, we just... I guess somebody said to me, it's just you trust each other. So I just kind of trust that he's doing his thing.
01:00:40
Speaker
And he probably... Yeah, he probably doesn't... doesn't even think about me. I just just have to trust him. Yeah, but it's, um yeah, we have to interact, ah usually for very boring logistical reasons, like he'll go, the wine's ready, take it away. And then I have to arrange for a lorry to go and pick it up and take it somewhere else. And yeah, it's, um yeah, it's it's a strange relationship.
01:01:09
Speaker
It's a lot of trust, though. Like, it is. effective You have this person that turns all of your hard work into a final product. Yeah. i've Yeah. It's a that's what I realized, actually, over the last few years.
01:01:22
Speaker
It's um it's a weird relation. not weird It's not the right word. it's, says it there is, um it's a, even though we don't interact that much, there's a very high level of trust.
01:01:35
Speaker
um And yeah, I realized actually how important that relationship is sometimes, usually if something goes wrong. and say oh my god um But it's, um yeah, there's a huge, it's hard to explain it You just hope that nothing goes wrong. And I'm very aware with wine that it's um It's a product that he can do the same thing every year, but there's a kind of an element to it that's always out of his control and things can go wrong. And then you have to work with each other to try and resolve those issues. um
01:02:12
Speaker
But yes it is yeah, it's ah very much based on trust. We talked earlier a little bit about low intervention viticulture. What does that mean? And is it something that you implement?
01:02:27
Speaker
So, yeah I think when I first started low low intervention, I would say, i guess the main things are there's various different ways you could look at it you could say the obvious thing is chemical use um you know you do spray things on the vines do you spray things on the ground and then there's the whole aspect and that's in the vineyard and then in the winery again um there's various different ways you could treat the wine you could you know add or to
01:02:58
Speaker
add all sorts of things to the wine or you could process it quite heavily or not. um And it's so in terms of the viticulture, I'm not organic.
01:03:10
Speaker
um I've experimented with all sorts of different ways of doing things. And my trouble is it's just me managing the vineyard. So I don't have a whole team of people. And I think I don't spray my vines at all.
01:03:24
Speaker
Occasionally I use weed killer. um because I've experimented with all sorts of other ways of controlling weeds and i just can't get them to work. But um I don't, yeah, it's um it's a tricky old thing really. But the my main thing is that I've shifted away from growing Pinot Noir because to me that was just terrible and I was just having to spray these vines with fungicide um and it was just, I didn't really want to have to do that. So I just love growing these hybrid varieties. i can literally just leave. I have to manage them in terms of tucking the growth in and pulling out leaves to create airflow. And there's a lot of all through the summer, I'm constantly managing them with my hands, um but I don't have to spray them at all.
01:04:12
Speaker
um And in the winery, Steve, he... hardly adds any sulfur to the wines. um I'm trying to think, we do use, we don't they're not natural wines in that he does add yeast.
01:04:26
Speaker
um but that's partly also because he makes wine for a few people and he's quite risk averse and he we've talked about doing natural making some natural wines but you know he doesn't want to be in a situation where he's made wines for people and they all go you know you can't predict what they're going to do sometimes and that would be very stressful for him and I realized actually for myself I've now built up a kind of A lot of my customers are shops and restaurants in Bristol who are actually familiar with natural wines. But I think for me as a
01:05:00
Speaker
I don't know what, as a person, i would feel quite nervous selling natural wines because I like people to really like my wine. And and if, I think with natural wines, there's a bit of a Marmite effect sometimes with some of them.
01:05:16
Speaker
And i I don't think I would enjoy that. I'd rather have something that I know pretty much everyone will like. I don't want to have to deal with grumpy people. Well, i imagine it would almost be kind My phone rings back.
01:05:29
Speaker
Sorry?
01:05:32
Speaker
No, my phone started ringing. Sorry. Oh, that's okay. um I imagine that if you if that was something that you were going to do, it would almost be like not starting over again, but it would it would almost be like starting over again because you'd have to learn how it all behaved, um learn how to market it all. It would be sort of a big step to try and turn everything into a natural wine, wouldn't it?
01:05:55
Speaker
but it just It's actually not that complicated. um it's just you just use a different i would just use a different winemaker for a particular product. I've thought about doing it. um ah But yeah, I think for now I'm just going to kind of stick with um what I've got because it's kind of working and...
01:06:16
Speaker
i Yeah, I just think I'd rather stick with something that I know people are going to like um and that won't do something. The thing about wines are, you know, you can... I mean, we get these with our wines. Sometimes you can store them for ages and and they they change over time. um And I'd rather just have something that was a bit predictable and not doing something strange.
01:06:36
Speaker
white You don't want to go in your wine shed think, oh, this wine's done something. It's changed completely overnight because the weather is... Often the wines do things that... Often ah ah a turning point for a wine might be in terms of its flavour or something weird might happen to it chemically.
01:06:53
Speaker
When I say chemically, I mean just within itself. i like I think of them almost as being alive, even though they're not. Often the change of season from summer to autumn, that slight drop in the temperature can trigger changes in a wine. And I think with natural wines, all sorts of things can sometimes happen, which I don't want to have to think about those things.
01:07:12
Speaker
What kind of things can happen to a natural wine? um Just like crystals can form in them. um Flavours can change.
01:07:22
Speaker
Fruit flavours can drop out. So a wine that might have been quite fruity at first might over time lose that fruitiness and then all you're left with is the not fruitiness. um Things like that.
01:07:36
Speaker
um I'd rather just yeah have something that's a little bit more predictable. I probably get loads of natural wine people saying, oh, that's rubbish. But um that's my experience of how it how it works.
01:07:48
Speaker
Everyone's always going to have an opinion. some Yeah. A bit scared. A bit nervous talking about it. but Oh, don't be. Everyone has an opinion about something. So, yeah you know, what you're doing is obviously working.
01:08:00
Speaker
Thank you. What's your favorite wine that you have on at the moment? um I always... The one I drink the most is the still rose.
01:08:11
Speaker
um I drink it every day. um But i really i really like all of them. But i could yeah i i think out of the two sparklings, I prefer the sparkling red.
01:08:25
Speaker
um Well, I've got three sparklings, actually. um Just because i the sparkling red has a slightly lower acidity, um which I just prefer. And I like the fruity. It's got a slightly more sort of interesting fruity flavor than sparkling white. um But mainly just because it's the the still rosé is obviously slightly less alcoholic.
01:08:48
Speaker
So you can't I can't go around drinking lots of sparkling wine the whole time. That would just feel too decadent. but um So I just like to drink the still rosé. I just love it. like I could just drink and drink and drink forever.
01:09:03
Speaker
yeah How much, it's actually um something I wanted to ask you before is you said you've got your first bit of land is two and a half acres. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. What kind of yield does two and a half acres give you? Obviously it depends on the grape variety, but with what you've got planted, how many bottles can you expect from that?
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah. so from about two acres, so I always equate it to you should be able to get at least sort of six, five to 6,000 bottles a year. It equates to most varieties. If they're high yielding varieties, you would get maybe two tonnes per acre.
01:09:45
Speaker
So a tonne is a thousand kilograms, and then that might translate into like a thousand kilograms, maybe sort of a eight hundred-ish bottles, and if you can sort of work backwards from that.
01:09:57
Speaker
um So yeah, a couple of acres, you should be able to get sort of five, six thousand bottles. But the thing about English wine, again, this is what makes the UK really different to Although I think it does vary a lot. I always want to say France and Germany, but a lot of other countries have a lot, their weather is much more stable and predictable. Whereas our, because of these very key points, like the start of the year, do we get a frost or not? The flowering period, do we get a week of rain or do we get a week of warm, sunny weather? Those two things massively impact
01:10:36
Speaker
um our harvests every year. um So we could go from having a year where we have, you know, really, really good harvest, loads and loads of grapes, um to a year where there's literally almost nothing.
01:10:50
Speaker
um and And it's just mainly because of those two key periods. So it's, it all hangs on that. And our weather's quite unpredictable sometimes. So I think somebody said, i often end up quoting this, I might be wrong, June,
01:11:04
Speaker
You think of June in the UK as almost middle of summer, but actually i think we have, June has almost the highest, I might be quote might be saying this wrong, our highest rainfall as well, or the highest average rainfall of any month and sometimes, and also the the biggest variation in temperature.
01:11:25
Speaker
And that's, yeah, so you can see it's for it's it's hard to predict how it's going to go every year. It's kind of like gambling, but I guess that's, You know, you get that with any arable crop in the UK or anywhere in the world, really.
01:11:39
Speaker
I find it crazy to have a business that is based, it's so weather dependent, you know, like yeah you could have an amazing year and then you could have a year where you get nothing. How do you how do you combat that? Like, that would stress me out.
01:11:55
Speaker
Yeah. Well, when I first started, you have to when I first started selling the wine, I built up this sort of customer base and I found that I was, I didn't have enough wine that I was running out of wine. and And then the restaurants were like, Oh, but we've got your wine on our list now. And you, you're saying you've run out. They're all really nice because they're all small independent business. They understood, but I thought, Oh, this is frustrating. I want to have enough wine to sell to people. So i I thinking, well, I can't plant, I literally can't grow any more grapes, but want to make my business profitable and stable. So that was the point where I made that decision.
01:12:35
Speaker
If there was a year where my harvest was really bad, i would just talk to some of my neighbours or other people in the southwest who maybe had done better than me, people that I liked the way they You know, I knew that they were perhaps using similar growing methods to me.
01:12:52
Speaker
um And then I would sort of buy in some of their grapes and help me so that I could create this kind of relatively stable output. And that's something that is very, very common in the wine world.
01:13:06
Speaker
and I suspect a lot of people aren't aware of it and it and it happens with it cider, every any kind of fruit. There's a lot of moving around of fruit going on at harvest time every year based on yet supply and demand, really. But yeah.
01:13:21
Speaker
I think a lot of people think that when you buy a bottle of wine, it's just comes from one vineyard. But like you said, it is very much, you know, it ebbs and it flows, like maybe one year you have enough to do all of yours and then another year you might have had a ah bad year, so you have to buy some in.
01:13:38
Speaker
um Yeah. does that Does that impact you financially quite a lot though? Because you've obviously planted your vines expecting to get a certain number of bottles and then you have to invest more money to buy grapes from somebody else.
01:13:51
Speaker
Does it kind of even out? or Yeah, it's kind of a weird thing because I used to always think, oh, it's such a pain that I have to do this. And actually through going through the process of trying to find the land to buy, I ended up talking to quite a few people about it and, um, and they said, well, actually I would see it in a different way. They completely flipped my view on it and said, if you can buy a ton of grapes from your neighbor for X amount, um, that's so much easier than having to go through the hassle and all that, you know, like we were saying, the whole setting up the vineyard, air everything, uh, the, the, the drama of, of growing those grapes yourself.
01:14:36
Speaker
Um, Yeah, you um you know, maybe it's not actually such a bad thing. um And not everybody does that. It's just some vineyards would say, well, we're just, you know, we've had a bad harvest. We'll only make a few hundred bottles this year. But I wanted to try and make, you know, my business is meant to be it's meant to be a proper business. You know, I actually pay myself and stuff. I didn't want it to be... ah a business which fluctuates massively every year.
01:15:04
Speaker
um i wanted to be able to, because the the other is kind of, um you know, you have, it's a cyclic process. So you're paying for all that wine production ah while you're growing next year's grapes. So you need to, it's just to do with cashflow, basically. You need to keep everything flowing. Otherwise it all kind of slightly grinds to a halt.
01:15:26
Speaker
So yeah, you've got to maintain it all. What was it like during COVID? Because if you're supplying restaurants and restaurants are now closed, how did you how did you still move your wine?
01:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, that was really interesting period. I felt very fortunate in that couldn't bear the idea of not being able to go to the vineyard. I suddenly realised how important it was to me. And I had this i had found it the other day when I was cleaning the car or something, this little scrap of paper that I printed out saying, i've printed out from DEFRA, you know, the government farming, food and farming, I'm an agricultural worker, so I was allowed to go to the vineyard because I was you know growing fruit for the country to keep us going. um So on the one hand, I was very grateful that I could go out to the vineyard every day. and Basically, my life just carried on as normal, and but I had to take the children with me, which wasn't so great.
01:16:31
Speaker
ah They were really annoying. But no, it was really fun, actually. And um they really loved it. They talk about it now. They really loved going out there. um They didn't do much work, though. But um in terms of the sales of the wine, it was very interesting because it just flipped overnight from selling to restaurants and shops to just selling to individuals.
01:16:56
Speaker
um And that's been that was interesting in from a slightly nerdy perspective in that... When I sell to the trade, to restaurants and shops, I get this sort of price for my wine. If I sell direct to a customer, I get literally twice the amount of money, but it's usually a little bit involves me having to make a little bit more personal effort to go and take the wine to the person. And that was really interesting to me, just looking at the figures and thinking in the longer term, oh, actually, it's great if you can maintain
01:17:26
Speaker
a bit more of those kind of personal sales because, well, you just, yeah, you get a slightly higher return for your product. um So yeah, it's just, it was interesting. And then as soon as COVID was over, it all just flipped back really quickly. um And I think I was just very lucky in Bristol. I think Bristol, I always say this is very unique because we have,
01:17:48
Speaker
a lot of these kind of independent restaurants and shops and you, and there's a really lovely kind of community. we have a, like a Bristol food, there's several WhatsApp groups, Bristol food community. And then there's the women's food community. um So you do gradually get to know people um and the and yeah, people will keep your wine on because they like you as a person and they like the wine, but it's a sort of weird combination of both of those things.
01:18:17
Speaker
um that kind of maintains it really and keeps it going. I think Bristol is amazing for that in how much they support and not not just support, like they they love anything independent.
01:18:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Bristol's got like a real history of, i was going to say being militant. That's not the right word, but it's a bit different. I think Bristol, and I was talking to someone, I forget who, oh Nottingham. where I was talking about Nottingham or I'm sure there must be other places that are like Bristol, but a lot of people say no, who've lived in different places.
01:18:51
Speaker
They say, oh no, it's not the same as Bristol. There's definitely something different about Bristol. I don't know what it is. i think we've got a really high proportion of people that have got a degree or PhD level. I don't know if that's it whether there's just a slightly different way of thinking. I don't know what it is, but it's interesting.
01:19:07
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I've had someone call it the Bristol effect before and I think it's true because there's just something about it. um But i yeah, I think it's amazing. And it obviously is sort of one of the things that helped you through COVID because I can imagine that when you heard that the restaurants had to close and I guess we didn't really know for how long, but was it was it scary for you thinking like, well, I don't have anyone to buy my wine at the moment or did it just pick up straight away?
01:19:33
Speaker
It was literally, ah I was nervous, yeah, I was scared. so I was thinking, oh, what am I going to do? I'm trying to think what happened. literally It's funny, isn't it I can't even remember. But I remember it was it happened overnight. I think I came up with an idea, one of my great ideas.
01:19:52
Speaker
I came up with an idea to say something like, oh, that's right. So normally i you know I have my price that I sell my wine direct for and then I have my trade price. and I thought, well, the restaurants are all shut.
01:20:05
Speaker
So maybe I could just say something like to the people, well, I think I offered more or less my trade price or a little bit higher, kind of midway point.
01:20:15
Speaker
And that seemed to kind of get some traction. And then before I knew it, I was selling quite a lot of wine at that kind of weird midway point. And it was just the psychology of of that. I think I came up with some like, I don't know, buy six, get some. I can't remember what it was now. I came up with some thing that I probably copied off someone else, but it worked quite well. Did you deliver all of the wines yourself then?
01:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, I did. i always find that quite interesting. and Well, I post wine as well, quite a lot. um in you know ah Yeah, I post wines quite a lot. I did have a phase where I was sort of sending pallets of wine up to London as well.
01:20:56
Speaker
um But then I stopped doing that because I realized actually it's quite as nicer just to sell it locally. But yeah, I always find it quite interesting when actual people buy the wine. It's actually a lot of vineyards...
01:21:10
Speaker
um their online sales actually only equate for about kind of around 10% of their sales. It's not very much. um A lot of vineyards sell their wine through people coming to visit their vineyard and they invest a lot of time and energy in doing vineyard tours and things like that. Whereas I don't do that.
01:21:28
Speaker
um A lot of mine goes out to restaurants and shops. And um it's always interesting when people order the wine and I go around their house to drop it off because I'm quite nosy. And I just find it just quite interesting just to knock on people's front doors and you kind of think, oh, I wonder who this person is or, you know, what they do. or i don't know. It's just interesting.
01:21:47
Speaker
Do you have a cellar door? Or where you have your vineyard, do you have somewhere where people can come and buy your wine? ah Not officially, but they they can. i have like free local delivery is my kind of thing. So they can just i have like a code that they can use on my web shop. So when they go and order someone, they can just type that code in And um usually they kind of check with me first.
01:22:11
Speaker
And then I'll just go and drop it off. Or if they live a bit further away, I just post it out to them. And that's a whole, that's something I realized actually with new vineyards. that's Once you get established with posting wine out, it's really easy and you get your kind of little thing of how you do it. But it's quite fiddly um because obviously it's glass and it gets smashed and you have to figure out simple ways of dealing with that so that it doesn't happen regularly. Um, but yeah, it's just another thing that you kind of learn with experience really.
01:22:43
Speaker
Your wines have, um, have received quite a few awards. Um, one of the ones that I definitely saw was, um, the great taste awards. And that really, not just that specific one, but sort of having your wines recognized and receiving accolades, has that changed a lot for your business?
01:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah it's interesting. but When I first started, i was really focused on trying to get the wines recognized. i i entered the International Wine Challenge quite a lot because from a marketing perspective, I thought, well, that sounds great because it's international. And then as time's gone on, i was just talking about this at the weekend, how you i don't know if it's a thing you build.
01:23:31
Speaker
I wasn't ah actively aware of it happening, but after covid there was a couple of years after the whole covid thing kind of finished or maybe during covid even i felt a tangible shift in that i didn't have to make any effort suddenly to sell the wine something just literally shifted within the space of a year and i couldn't figure out what it was it must have been like i mean there's still loads of people that have never heard of my wine or me in bristol But there was definite shift where I felt I didn't need to make so much effort anymore um and people start coming to you instead, which was quite nice. Again, I've forgotten the question now. What was it um about About the awards. Yeah.
01:24:12
Speaker
Yeah. that That shift in the demand and me not having to make so much effort, I've got a little bit lazier in recent years when I think, well, I know I'm going to sell the wine anyway.
01:24:23
Speaker
So I don't always enter the competitions because I don't know if you how it works. You know you pay to enter and then if you win, you pay to get the little stickers and then you have to literally put them on the wine. So it's a little bit of a pain sometimes. But what i notice...
01:24:40
Speaker
is that if you win an award, you know you can get people right about it in the press. And I noticed that the public really respect that if you've won an award, they really all love that. And they really go, that's amazing. That's amazing. And I think, oh, yeah, it's not not a big deal. But I can see that they think it's a really big deal. So I can see the importance of it.
01:25:03
Speaker
um and I often just enter more of the local competitions these days, actually, um in a weird way. Sometimes it's much harder to win a prize in a local competition than in an international one. It's funny.
01:25:17
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if if when you sort of started to notice that shift that you didn't have to convince people to buy your wines, if that was around the same time of a certain award or something like that. It's always so hard to measure, you know, what was the cause and what was the effect, but it would be interesting.
01:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, I did this whole crowdfunding thing as well. And that was, oh when was that? 2020, I can't remember 2021 or or something.
01:25:46
Speaker
and that I think that I had to reach out to a wider audience with that. So I don't know if that had something to do with it. Or if it's almost like... That sounded a bit...
01:25:59
Speaker
arrogant but you know you know like people who are tv presenters they just hang around long enough and suddenly people start saying oh they're uh not a legend but they're like uh what do you say that it there's a term for them i can't think of the term my brain's gone dead if you're basically just around long enough you become part you become this sort of accepted thing i don't know as long as your product is good then yeah i don't know it's a com it's probably a combination of all these things together And it's quite hard to kind of pinpoint really. It's just a kind of tipping point.
01:26:31
Speaker
but I could still need to get the, I don't rest on my laurels. I'm still always trying to reach out a bit further. But it must've been nice though, in that moment when you realize that you don't have to convince people to sell your wine, that they're coming to you. That's gotta be the, not the safe point, but the point that you kind of really want to get to.
01:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It was really nice. Um, because, but then I'm someone one that likes to have a kind of focus and I guess then you have to shift your focus.
Reflections and Future Plans
01:27:02
Speaker
That was probably the point where I started focusing on trying to buy some more land. I think I naturally, I'm just a sort of person that likes to have something to a challenge you know so the initial challenge was you know can you sell the wine and I guess once you feel like you've you can do that then you your brain naturally seeks out another challenge and um that's I guess that's what life's about isn't it you have to kind of push yourself ah did you have any any really sort of bad vintages or any really bad years where you thought that it was it just wasn't going to happen that year
01:27:41
Speaker
uh yep uh weirdly the first harvest we ever had was ah the wettest year ever there were like floods everywhere all around somerset um so we just had this really tiny harvest of it was then pinot noir grapes um and that was when i said to you the first rose we produced was quite dark and it was really cool it was really lovely but it was quite weird in that it was almost like a red wine. um So, yeah, you just kind of have to work with what you're given, really.
01:28:10
Speaker
um In recent years, we've had things where, so it's not just the quantity or the quantity, the quantity of the grapes or the acids or the sugars in the grapes. The other thing that varies is the the size of the grapes. So this year we had quite a lot of grapes, but the grapes, you know, they there's this point, there's various stages of development of the grape and the point where it swells up. This year we had like zero rain um throughout that whole period of late summer. So, that you know, a grape might swell to kind of that size normally,
01:28:46
Speaker
But if it doesn't rain at all throughout the whole of August or July, it will only go to that size. And that's kind of irritating because then you get to the harvest and when you you squash the grape, there's half the amount of juice in there.
01:28:59
Speaker
um So yeah, it's um yeah there's there's variation in everything really. ah On sort of the flip side, are there any years where like you thought it was going to be a terrible year and it turned out to be something really cool and amazing?
01:29:15
Speaker
I think there was a year where we had really bad frost damage at the start, and then it was really sort of soul-destroying. um But then actually it all it all worked out pretty well in the end. And the grapes still, we had a really good crop in the end and they still reached really good levels of ripeness.
01:29:31
Speaker
um So yeah, that was quite a nice, a fun year where it all kind of turned out all right in the end. But um every year, yeah, it's just completely different. um And I, some people, when we meet up with the other vineyard owners, they'll like go, oh, I remember that year, this and that. And I can't remember which years were good or bad now. I just forget once it's over. But some people have a better memory than Sorry, one second.
01:30:06
Speaker
What was it like the first time you opened your first bottle of wine? So that first year when you did your first harvest and you, you know, you'd only just been sort of doing it by yourself and then all of a sudden your efforts have turned into a bottle of wine.
01:30:21
Speaker
What was it like when you first opened your own bottle? What was it like? I'm trying to think back. I'm someone that's not very, you might have noticed this now because I'm not very good at, um,
01:30:33
Speaker
taking those moments in, I always immediately go on to the next thing. So I think it was lovely. It was nice. I was, it was more a sense of relief. i usually are like, Oh good. That's okay. You know, right. Move on. Um, but yeah, it was, it was lovely to have that lovely product to sell and that people liked it. That was really nice.
01:30:54
Speaker
Um, but yeah, you very quickly then move on to the next thing. Cause it's just constantly changing. Um, so yeah, it's um I don't know if that's just me or if that's the way all the wine producers are. you know Even if you have one really good wine, I guess it's like a pop star, isn't it? Or somebody who's produced a music album, um you're always thinking about the next thing and the next thing.
01:31:17
Speaker
um Yeah, you have to... I do kind of hang on to old bottles, but I don't know when I'll ever open them. you know I just think, well, must hang on to that. But um yeah, it's a funny old thing, really.
01:31:29
Speaker
There was no big celebration or anything for your first vintage wine? Well, I did, i used to do a lot of wine launches. I remember I did a wine launch in the local wine shop. And it was the first time I'd ever done anything like that. And then we did it every year because I realized it was quite a good thing to do.
01:31:43
Speaker
um and one year I did one at the Bristol Beacon. That was quite cool. um When it had all been redone. And ah so I do make a fuss about it sometimes.
01:31:55
Speaker
um But it's... um Sometimes, yeah, sometimes I just kind of release a new wine and just ah don't even almost say anything about I'm going to go blasé these days.
01:32:07
Speaker
You've done it for long enough now. You don't have to. You don't have to prove it as much. No, no. It's um it's nice to do those kind of things. because you forget that actually other people really notice those things. And the launches are quite fun because you can invite along, you know, a lot of people from the Bristol food scene and and they're all really lovely people. So, um yeah, it's always nice to kind of catch up with people and then they'll go off and tell people about your wine. It just kind of reminds people that you're there really and reminds people what you're doing.
01:32:36
Speaker
Word of mouth is a huge thing everywhere, but I think especially in Bristol, people love to talk about when they have a good product. So it's probably really helpful when you do the launches. No, definitely. I haven't done one for a while. i must i was yeah i nearly i was going to do one and then I didn't get around to it. I must do one. I must do one next.
01:32:56
Speaker
Where are we? I can't remember what month we're in. November. Yeah, i must I'll do one. I'll do one next year. Now I said it, I'll um i'll do it. Let me know. I'd love to come. thank you They are really fun, actually. Well, fun for everyone else, but no, they're fun for me too.
01:33:12
Speaker
Probably a little bit stressful, but hopefully fun. Yeah, no, is it's good is' it's quite good. It's a kind of weird evening um where a little bit like the grape harvest day is kind of weird, where you're surrounded by people and they're all trying to kind of say hello to you. And then it goes in a bit of a blur.
01:33:31
Speaker
And then, um yeah, it's um it's a good thing, though. Yeah, it just yeah keeps keeps everybody talking, like you say. On your new piece of land that you've just got, ah you what grapes are you growing on there? What are you planning on doing with it?
01:33:45
Speaker
ah So the new piece of land, I am just going to grow Seval Blanc and Regent. On my rented field, i try I was going to experiment. I've got a little bit of... Oh, God, sorry.
01:33:58
Speaker
I thought it was a spider. It was the dog stuck his leg out of the bed and it frightened the life out of me. He just stuck his leg out suddenly. You can't see it um He...
01:34:08
Speaker
I thought it was a massive spider running out of um i can't remember what was saying. Oh, um on my rented field, I experimented with a bit of Cabernet Noir, and which is really, really dark grape, and some Devico, which is a new kind of red variety as well. And what else? um This variety called Voltis, which is interesting. It's a new white variety, and it's the only white variety that the fret you know the French have all these rules and regulations. that they've now accepted can be grown in the Champagne region as an alternative, a hybrid alternative that doesn't get mildew ah to the normal Champagne varieties. um
01:34:50
Speaker
But yeah, I wouldn't say I've still really got a feel for those grape varieties. um And from what I've seen of them, I'm not like hugely impressed.
01:35:01
Speaker
I think I'd rather stick with ones that are well known and established like Seval and Regent because I kind of get what I know what they're going to do and how they behave. And I really like them. So then I tried out these new ones and I thought, oh, would do you know what? I might stick with what I know really.
01:35:16
Speaker
Just be able to make more of it. Yeah, exactly. where can we Where can we find your wines to those who are listening? ah So I always direct people towards my website because that's the best way for me to sell it. But I realise people often... The psychology of the purchase process, people realise like to not necessarily have to interact with a person. They just like to go into a shop and just purchase the wine. So there's it's available in lots of different shops around Bristol. always just say to people, just...
01:35:53
Speaker
People text me or message me and say, oh i live in I say, where which bit of Bristol do you live in? And then I can tell them they're near a shop. there's There's loads of little shops all around Bristol. But I can't, I always forget if if you if I had to reel them off, I'd forget. So I just say, what's your where do you live or where do you work? It's usually more helpful because that's probably more likely to be in the centre. And then I can just direct them to their closest place.
01:36:17
Speaker
And then, so if I'm going to buy wine from your website, can do you do like mixed boxes or do you have to buy a six pack? I think you get free delivery if you buy six bottles, i think. can't remember. um and But yeah, you get free local delivery if it's...
01:36:37
Speaker
in the centre of Bristol or or happens to be somewhere I'm going that week. Like, but I'm always going out towards Bristol Airport and I'm always going out um towards um Bath as well. So, you know, I'm quite, as i always say to people, it's just me at the other end. So just, they just have to talk to me and I'll kind of figure out if it's workable or not, or if they need to pay for delivery or not, really.
01:37:03
Speaker
That's so nice, though, that when someone's going to buy some of your wine, if they go to your website, that they they get you. I mean, it's a lot of work for you, I imagine, running everything, but it makes it quite personal. Yeah, I always try, like people often order gifts and things, you know, that I have these wooden wine boxes that people can buy.
01:37:22
Speaker
And I always just say to them, do what do you want me to write something in... I've got these really lovely postcards that were made by Nick Hand. who does He's got this... What's it called? The letterpress. It's like the oldest street in the old part of the city, down near um Corn Street. He's got these really old presses, and he's made me these really beautiful little postcards. um And, yeah, I write notes on them for people. And I can tell people are always slightly surprised when I say, oh what do you want me to write? Do you want me to write a little card? And what would you... and They're like, oh, wow, amazing. And yeah, they don't expect that, I think.
01:37:56
Speaker
So it's nice to try and make a little special, make something a bit special for people. That's really cool. um What wine do you recommend for the festive period?
01:38:08
Speaker
ah Well, I always find it really annoying that people don't drink people don't drink still rose in the winter because why would you stop? It's so lovely. i why just is this I don't know why they do it. I guess they just associate it with summer, but I don't know why you would because to me it's all just marketing. I don't really get the difference between a red and a white and a rose. mean, I get the difference, but I don't see why you would restrict yourself. um But, yeah, sparkling red is always really good with Christmas,
01:38:37
Speaker
dinner um sparkling red because it's lower acidity it tends to go with a wider variety of foods um and but what i notice is there's a huge surge in demand for sparkling white wine around christmas time it's very predictable yeah people everybody wants that basically not not even the sparkling rose they all want sparkling white wine It is true, actually. I've never really thought about it because me, and white, red or rosé, it's all any time of the year. But I think especially here in England, people associate rosé with summer and that's it.
01:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's so weird. Which is funny because they would drink a white wine still at Christmas time, but not a rosé. I think rosé sales generally just are going up and up and up every year. And I think there's a lot of demand for that dry style of provence style rose um but maybe that's the next shift maybe that's my next mission is to try and get people to stop doing this silly no rose over winter thing could be a cool marketing campaign there yeah yeah yeah that's a good idea because it is silly isn't it i mean you don't do it with any well i'm trying to think about any other kind of drinks
01:39:54
Speaker
products that you would do that with that are very summer related um I guess maybe some like a husband no I don't know really it's just a very psychological thing yeah I guess any any purchase is isn't it it's all it's all kind of psychology and marketing it's all in your head really as long as it tastes good it's ah a lot of it is in your head I'm with you on the petition that we should all be drinking rosé at Christmas.
01:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And sparkling red, to be fair. For me, sparkling red almost feels like a Christmas drink. Yeah, I guess red's a Christmassy colour, isn't it? I don't mind as long as it tastes good.
01:40:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's so exciting. I really, really want to try some of your wines. And I think a lot of other people should definitely investigate as well, because from what i can see and what I've heard and what you've told me, they sound really interesting and really tasty. Yeah.
01:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm absolutely fully confident that they're all really, really good. Honestly, yeah, they're really good. i have full confidence in them. ah Yeah, I love them. I love all of them. They're really good.
01:41:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been really, really interesting and thank you definitely a little bit left field from what we normally have. But I think it's, um like I said before, it's definitely industry adjacent. We're all part of the same thing, just from different areas of it. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience.
01:41:21
Speaker
No, thank you. Thank you for talking to me and asking me questions. It's good because it kind of Does anyone ever ask you questions about your... No, well on the podcast? Well, just generally, it's kind of an interesting process to go through because you get you do things your way and you don't even question it sometimes, do you, until someone asks you the questions. So it's interesting. I always find that when I'm um trying to show somebody something, you almost have to remove yourself and think, okay, like there are steps to this that I just do naturally and by instinct that somebody yeah who hasn't done it doesn't know. So you do have to bring yourself back to be like, what are all of these steps that somebody might need to know? But no, I definitely definitely don't get asked questions on the podcast. Yeah.
01:42:10
Speaker
we could do a refer We could. We could. That be really fun, actually. Because I'm really nosy. I'd be very interested. Yeah. Tell you all the secrets. Yeah.
01:42:21
Speaker
Awesome. Well, everyone should check out your website and your winery. I'm going to put um a link to it in the notes afterwards so everyone can have a look. That's great. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you for coming on.