Grapes of good hope

Fancy producing your own wine? Now is the time to do your homework

You might expect a former Conservative minister to do his bit for a burgeoning British industry – but English wine? As chief whip in the last months of the Thatcher government, Tim Renton stalked the corridors of power; last month, vine stalks were at the top of his agenda, as the Tory peer and his wife, Alice, gathered their first harvest at Mount Harry, their house near Offham, in East Sussex.

It was all hands to the grape, as Lord and Lady Renton were joined by friends and members of their family, including their son Dan, with his girlfriend, Kim Reczek, and his sister Chelsea, who brought her young children. “It was the only wet day of the week, but that didn’t stop picking,” says Lady Renton.

They planted up 5½ acres in 2006. “We had four fields we used to let for sheep-grazing, but you can’t get money for that, so we thought vines would be interesting,” Lady Renton explains. “You get £1,500-£2,000 per tonne, depending on the quality and whether the winery is short of grapes.”

Despite the dismal summer, they got 2.2 tonnes – “which, for 7,500 young vines, was about what was expected”. Given a normal season next year, she hopes to harvest double that. The Rentons are contracted to supply Ridgeview, one of the country’s leading producers of sparkling wine, whose staff give them guidance and advice. Ridgeview is so impressed with the grapes produced by the Rentons, it is keeping them aside to see if they produce a quaffable, distinctive flavour. “If they do, they will have a sparkling wine called Mount Harry,” says Lady Renton.

The couple are following in a long tradition: wine has been produced in Britain since Roman times, and it was an Englishman, Christopher Merret, who presented the first recipe for sparkling wine to the Royal Society in 1662, 30 years before Dom Pérignon got going in France.

English wine production is enjoying something of a boom. “In the past three years, something extraordinary has happened,” says Peter Hall, who has been producing wine on his six acres of land at Breaky Bottom, near Lewes, East Sussex, since 1974. “People with money from the City are getting into it – it is strictly sparkling wine that has caused this liftoff.” If there is anyone left in the City with money to invest, “it will be an important addition to agriculture”.

“English wine is no longer the preserve of eccentrics, as it once was,” says Stuart Smith of the wine importer The Vine House, in Westow, near York, and owner of Ryedale, England’s most northerly commercial vineyards. “There are serious businessmen doing it now, with serious investment. Some cover more than 100 acres.”

It is hard to believe, after the soggy summer and the recent snowfall in London, that climate change is really happening, but temperatures are predicted to rise by between 2C and 3.5C in the next 70 years. In the short term, this should be good for those who fancy producing their own appellation. Professor Richard Shelley, who studies the effects of geology and climate change on viticulture at Imperial College London, predicts that Scottish vineyards could produce wine in five years’ time. (What it might taste like is another thing.) The bad news, says Shelley, is that by the third quarter of the century, southern counties such as Hampshire, Kent and Sussex, where most of our wine is produced at the moment, may become too hot for wine production, and will instead have to switch to producing currants and raisins.

Growing grapes for wine doesn’t have to be a commercial activity. If your garden has the right conditions, and if you are prepared to put in the effort, now is the time to do your homework and order your vines for planting next spring. Chris Foss is head of wine at Plumpton College, in East Sussex, which runs day courses in vine-grow-ing and Europe’s only university-level English-language wine course.

“Without giving up the day job, you can get 2,000 bottles an acre,” he says. “You can make as much as you want for personal consumption, but I guess you wouldn’t want more than 300 or 400 bottles a year. For a bottle a day, you would need a quarter of an acre or so; you lose space on alleys.”

Malcolm Hord has 250 vines planted in a 0.25acre south-facing sloping site in Somerset, protected by windbreak hedges at either side, a pleached hornbeam hedge at the bottom (so the frost can roll under it) and a brick wall at the top. “In a good year, we get 500 bottles,” he says. “Last year and this, which have been very poor, we will probably get 100.” He and his wife, Liz, won’t go short, though. “As we don’t sell it, we have a stock to draw on; a good year tides us over a bad one.”

He sends his grapes away to a local winery, and the total cost per bottle is about £2 – and as he doesn’t sell it, he doesn’t pay tax and duty. “We put our own labels on,” he adds. The couple recently entertained 90 people to lunch for Hord’s 70th birthday. The wine? Providence Vineyard.

Playing your part in the viticultural revolution

Can I produce my own Château Acacia Avenue? The climate in this country is not warm enough yet to grow vines on the flat. According to Chris Foss, “south-facing slopes give you more heat, as the sun is more focused. Slopes usually have poorer soils, which vines tend to thrive on. Free-draining soil is essential”.

If the soil is very chalky, you must have chalk-tolerant rootstock, or the vines won’t take up iron. “You have to be in an area that doesn’t get late spring frosts, as the buds and young shoots are frost-prone,” Foss says. “You then need sufficient heat to ripen the grapes throughout the growing season.”

Southern counties - Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Gloucestershire, Essex (nice and dry) – are good, though you could grow vines further north, up to southwest Scotland, if the spot is sheltered. Temporary cover might be required to protect the vines during flowering and bud-burst in June.

Is it difficult? Growing vines is labour-intensive and you have to prune and train throughout the year. “If you don’t, they will grow to 8ft,” says Malcolm Hord. You also need to make sure the fruits get plenty of sunlight to ripen, which means clearing leaves around the bunches. Regular spraying will prevent fungal diseases such as mildew and botrytis.

Birds and animals such as badgers and foxes all appreciate the sugars in the ripening fruits, so guard against them. Lady Renton, who lost about 100 bunches of grapes, tried bangers, a helium balloon and solar lights. “Our final weapon was two battery-powered radios,” she says. “They played Radio 4 and the World Service. On a quiet night you could hear voices at either end of the vineyard. It does seem to have stopped them.”