The Vineyard Hoppers

The first in our Meet the Makers just happens to be another winey from Kent! We are hoping to head to Terlingham Vineyard later this year!

How did you become a winemaker? 

We’re originally from South Africa, and moved to the UK in 2007. Although we were very enthusiastic consumers of wine, we had no wine-making or farming experience. We weren’t quite sure what the UK held in store for us… But we had a love of the outdoors, a love of nature and we were looking for an adventure. In 2011 we discovered beautiful Folkestone, and found Terlingham Vineyard up for sale. It felt like home right away… Not least because our Grandparents, were born and raised in nearby Ashford before emigrating to South Africa. So, coming “home” just felt right.

We jumped in! And, doing everything ourselves, we built Terlingham Vineyard into the magical space it is today. Almost 12 years in and we are loving it, and excited about where this adventure is taking us as a family.
We moved to Natural Farming almost 9 years ago now, and that has been the best change we could have made. The positive impact on the health and biodiversity in and around the vineyard has been incredible, and the quality of the grapes has improved as well (we keep ourselves cropped slightly lower than industry average. This means we need less leaf, which helps us manage disease. But it also means more energy going into the grapes rather than leaves, and you can really tell in the quality of the grapes)

We’re very proud to work with Defined Wines to make our wines. They’re great partners and very supportive of our eco-friendly and sustainable focus.

What’s unique about your wines? 

It all starts with the grapes! We follow natural farming practices. This means we don’t use any artificial pesticides, fertilisers or herbicides. We encourage the natural wild grasses and flowers that grow amongst the vines, and we welcome the bees, butterflies and spiders that accompany them! We do everything in the vineyard ourselves, by hand, and we make our wines in a traditional, low intervention way as well. 

We do all the riddling, disgorging, corking and caging of our sparkling wines by hand, ourselves. And we label all of our bottles by hand as well. 

“The story of the year we had in the vineyard, put into the bottle” Each year, we try to be as true to the terroir and weather conditions we had on the vineyard, and make as few adjustments as possible. We don’t hold wine back to blend year on year either. This means that each year’s vintage is completely unique and a true reflection of the terroir.

We don’t use finings so all of our wines are vegan friendly. 

What efforts do you make to be environmentally friendly? 

This is the very heart of everything we do. We are certified with SWGB, as is Defined Wine. We follow natural farming practices, use paper labels on our wines, and all of our packaging (even the bubble wrap!) is recyclable/biodegradable. Our most recent carbon footprint audit showed we have a negative 11.9 ton footprint per year! So we’re actually a carbon sink for the surrounding area.

How do you feel the internet has changed the way the winemaking industry operates, if it has at all? 

We’re such a new entrant into the market, we’ve only ever worked in an internet enabled environment!

How do you choose which styles of wine to make? 

We grow 6 types of grapes  – pinot noir, pinot meunier, chardonnay, bacchus, rondo and dornfelder. We aim each year to make a sparkling white and rose from the noble blend, and a still white bacchus and rose rondo and dornfelder blend (if we have a hot summer with perfect conditions, we have made a lovely red from these grapes as well!) But we really rely on what grapes we get off the vineyard, so some years we have made a blanc de noir for example, in 2015 we didn’t get the required ripeness in the chardonnay. It was an award-winning sparkling, which was fantastic – we get what mother nature gives us.

What are the biggest problems you run into in producing wine?

As a very small producer (we only make between 4,000-5,000 bottles of wine a year) one of our biggest challenges is sourcing stock in small quantities. With all the supply chain challenges at the moment, we find we often lose out to companies that can place larger orders.

What has been your favourite wine you’ve created to date? 

Our 2019 Sparkling White – our all time favourite so far! It was named as one of Countryfile’s top 10 English Sparkling Wines to try, and was also featured on Saturday Kitchen.

If there were a wine style that you could make with no regards to cost, had access to any machinery needed, and could grow any grapes you wanted; what would it be and why?

 I’d love to make more 100% naturally fermented wines. We’ve done a few in the past but they are more risky and we’re so small that we can’t take that chance on a regular basis!

If you could collaborate with any other wine maker/vineyards with money/distance being no issue, who would it be and why? 

When we first decided to move to natural farming, we did a lot of research into how this was being done around the world. Spain has a huge number of natural and organic vineyards, and we came across Menade who were an absolute inspiration. It would be incredible to work with them!

One tip you would give to those wanting to start with their own vineyard.

Do as much research as you possibly can – there’s a huge amount of knowledge and research available now, I’d say take advantage of anything that you can. There are so many different ways to go about it, different grapes, soil types, wine patterns etc… you have to get all your basics right from the get go.