Talk about flavoursome – citrus and exotic fruits dance on the tongue amid enticing elderflower aromas – well worth the wait. The vines grew strong after a few years of hard pruning under Philippe’s nurturing hand to produce a superb crop last September to produce this first vintage. Mrs Mouse can’t stop sniffing she loves the aromas so much! Everyone who kindly helped harvest is mentioned by name on the label.
As the delicate buds sprout on the vines in mid April, it’s time to get the sprinkler frost protection system into action. Blossom on the fruit trees and bluebells surround the vineyard – everything is springing into life.
The sparkling rosé sold out this year and we have just replenished stocks with some 2022 vintage made mostly from Pinot Noir (seen here), giving lovely peach and floral notes, together with some Seyval Blanc with adds crispness.
Hendred Furlong is so popular with locals we thought we’d try entering it into the WineGB competition and it was the highest scoring Madeleine Angevine wine and was awarded a silver medal too. This competition is expensive to enter and it’s usually larger vineyards who enter their best wines so it was really rewarding after all the effort it has been nurturing these vines. They are quite delicate and susceptible to things like wasps and weather damage as the skins are quite thin. They flower late and ripen early however, so in some ways ideal for our climate. Fresh and fruity inimitable Madeleine Angevine!
The vineyard will be open just as the pruning is finished, the canes are being tied down and the buds starting to swell, so you can see the vineyard just as the season begins. The wines will be available to taste too. The naughty mice have hidden a gift certificate somewhere in the vineyard. They get carried away at this time of the year with all the Easter egg hunts and wanted to do their own version. Whoever finds it at the vineyard open afternoon this Saturday 12th April 2-4pm can bring it to the shop and reap their reward (if they are over 18!), but only if they know the answer to this question: which two grape varieties make Hendred Brut? If you helped with the harvest in 2023 you can find your name on the label as a token of appreciation. The 2024 harvest wines are almost ready for bottling and are very exciting, particularly the deep colour of the rosé.
A day exploring grape-growing and wine with our wine-maker and a great opportunity to exchange experience and ideas with others. Growing grapes in a sustainable way, while maximising quality and yield and learning about ways in which vineyard practices can impact the wine-making process, we came away a little wiser and inspired to try a few new things this year. Feeling tiny amongst the fermenting wine tanks, (like Alice in Wonderland but no ‘drink me’ sign anywhere unfortunately) and looking forward to this year’s fruits of labour more than ever!
To pick or not to pick that is the question – a balancing act more than ever this year. The rain around flowering time and relatively little sun late summer has resulted in a crop that is not as homogenous as usual – some bunches ripe and others not – so we, like many other vineyards in the UK are practising a ‘green harvest’ before the actual harvest. This is done to ensure that unripe grapes are removed, so only the ripest grapes go to make wine. Any small pale green or very small berries are snipped off. While the sugars in the grapes increase and acids reduce – there is a window of optimum harvest time when we hope fine weather will align.
Our latest still white wine is created from Madeleine Angevine grapes harvested in October 2023 and available June 2024. Aromas and flavours described by a panel of wine experts: white flowers, English garden, nearly dry, light body, good length, very fruity, guava and passionfruit on the palate. This variety (7672) is distinct from the French Madeline Angevine. It flowers late and ripens early, so this short growing season is ideal for the British climate, ripening late summer. The term ‘furlong’ originally used for measuring a distance of field ploughed, has an association with horse racing, reminiscent of East Hendred’s history. The link path between East and West Hendred is locally known as ‘the furlong’.
Hendred Furlong was produced many years ago, though this is the first pure Madeleine Angevine wine produced here in over ten years! A team effort with Biaggio creating a nursery from cuttings, David and Eileen planting, Philippe looking after and pruning the delicate vines and Michael and Naomi helping a little too. The crop from 2023 which created this bottle of wine was superb.
January 3rd ten years ago was a freezing day. It was the day we moved to the vineyard, with our two young children to embark on what we thought would be an exciting adventure. In those first few days when the heating didn’t work and the electrics kept tripping (not ideal for the reptile tanks), the gradual discovery of various (some quite serious) maintenance issues unfolded.
Countless projects later, the vineyard has expanded to keep up with local demands for wine. In the early days we relied on contractors to advise, maintain vines and harvest and we have progressed to managing it ourselves with help from a super small team.
With a combination of a farming family plus business strategy and innovation at the heart of our occupations since leaving university and a love of nature and being outside, surely running a vineyard would be a piece of cake. Not quite so. It turns out that the learning curve of how to grow grapes and produce good wine is as convoluted as it is a fine art. Experience sure gives theory a run for it’s money. We have worked hard on optimizing everything we can, including soil conditions and mitigating effects from the extremes of the British weather. Every year we try new things and do everything in the most sustainable way we can. And each year throws up new challenges. The weather at key times such as flowering, bud break and ripening can impact the grape yield massively.
To protect against frost we once tried covering vines in frost fleece, held in place using hundreds of clothes pegs (child labour employed), have made mini fires at -4 °C, sprayed the buds with polymers and eventually became early adopters of a novel sprinkler frost protection system. This has worked wonders and is perfect for this site, drawing water from springs and a natural pond and powered by solar energy. The engineering for this involved a good deal of head scratching, re-engineering and more head-scratching, not to mention some eyewatering water pump launches into the pond and several hours of adjusting sprinklers in rain-coats. In the end, the heart-ache of watching spritely green shoots go brown and droop after a night of frost will remain, we hope, a distant memory.
The interest and help of the community in East Hendred and beyond has been truly the most inspirational part of this journey. In particular the Sicilian Biagio who helped plant the original vines and very French Philippe, who diligently cares for the vines.
The highlights of the vineyard year include the harvest days. We only pick in good weather and are always surprised at how inaccurate our harvest estimates are, so it is always a nervy but excitable day. Will there be too many harvesters or not nearly enough? Each harvest time, they re-ignite our passion for the vineyard with their enthusiasm. Will there be one four hour trip to the wine maker today or, too much for the truck and two? When we started with the vineyard, contractors helped us a lot but now we do pretty much everything with people we know.
Another highlight is tasting of the new wines with the winemaker and getting together at the regional competition to taste wines with owners of other local vineyards. The complexities of wines and how they can be so different year to year is intriguing. This is also an opportunity for local grape growers and wine-makers to exchange ideas, experiences and there is great camaraderie with being part of a growing industry. The icing on the cake has been winning awards for the wine. Hendred Brut won the regional ‘best sparkling wine’ in 2016; we also won ‘best rose’ twice (2019 and 2023) A combination of the site with great soil and microclimate (and remarkably little issue with disease or pests), varieties of grapes fine-tuned over the years to thrive and crucially and a superb wine-maker.
It’s not surprising then that with the warming climate and advances in viticulture including optimising grape growing techniques and disease resistant varieties and developments in winemaking have ignited the explosion of vineyards in the UK. Hendred vineyard is actually one of the oldest vineyards in England, established in 1972 by the McKinnon family. It’s place at the beginning of the S shaped curve of vineyard numbers (which hasn’t yet tailed off) is always an mouth-opener to any new visitors to the vineyard. In the last five years the area under vine in the UK has doubled and there are now well over 943 vineyards and 209 wineries (2022 WineGB data). The popularity of English wines, particularly sparklings has soared, boosted after an international panel tasting in 2004 which awarded most of the top ten positions to the English wines: sour grapes for the traditional wine producers of other countries. With the local food movement driven by the desire of consumers to cut food miles, local vineyards like ourselves, are trying their best to keep up with demand. We have grown the size of the vineyard with more planting and two new grape varieties.
Keeping up with day-to-day tasks of running the vineyard is, as anyone who runs a small business knows, is all consuming. Alongside this, since we began 10 years ago, we created a tasting room, a shop and developed outbuildings, have given presentations, tastings and have open days in the summer and also set up this web page, so we feel quite connected with our customers. We listened when they asked for a sparkling rosé and produced the first this year. We have developed a really good relationship with our wine-maker and are excited about the new wines being made, particularly from the 2023 harvest as the grapes were we think the loveliest (as well as the most abundant) yet. Selling through our online shop and cellar door and a few local farm shops and a deli we want to keep things as local as possible.
One of the unexpected pleasures of the vineyard has been becoming so in touch with nature. Catching sight of the variety of wildlife here which has become a real passion. The drama of a hailstorm when the vines are flowering and all could be lost, certainly helps you connect with nature too.
Of course there is the paperwork, the eye watering HMRC monthly returns, the regulatory and licencing requirements and the technical equipment and building and land maintenance (e.g. falling trees every time there is a storm) etc. etc. to contend with, but all in all the last ten years has been the adventure of a life time. Who knows what the next ten years holds but we hope the vineyard will continue to grow and we still have the appetite for trying more new things.
