The Vineyard (Garden) of England

Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Kent and parts of Sussex were always known as the "Garden of England".
However this is changing significantly as a thousands of acres of Vines continue to be planted. Very few of these are yet to produce any quantity of wine and what there is tends to be massively over priced.

Some English Sparkling wine is now better than Champagne, however when you can buy Champagne in the supermarkets for around £15.00 a bottle and the cheapest drinkable English at £22.49.
Champagne still has the better brand recognition and is controlled by the French growers to ensure consistent quality which is lacking in English sparkling.

Most of the Vineyards are owned by wealthy individuals who are content to throw money at this. With set up costs of many tens of thousands an acre and 3/4 years before you can pick any grapes of commercial quantities and another 2 or 3 years before you have a sparling wine. this is not for the faint hearted.
Still wines from Chile are now of a very high quality and priced at well under a tenner.

Will the Vineyards go the same way as the Hop Gardens?
 

delilah

Member
One of our landlords has established what seems to be a very successful family run vineyard, i'm too polite to ask about the finances but they don't seem to struggle to sell it at top money.
They reckon that it is getting too hot in southern France hence the industry is moving north, if that's the case i'd say they have a rose future.
 

kfpben

Member
Location
Mid Hampshire
I suspect there may be a re-structuring of sites where the poorer vineyards are grubbed up and the better sites continue to be operated. There may also be a shift into Essex- the summers are warmer and drier there than in central southern England.

There’s quite a lot of marginally viable vineyards that have been planted by wealthy people who just like the idea of owning a vineyard but haven’t really done their homework.

Re: hops there’s a new hop garden been planted up towards Farnham which is quite interesting. I believe they are making a decent go of it.
 

bactosoil

Member
Viticulture is one of the fastest growing sectors within agriculture , yes there are some serious investors in vines but there are many medium/smaller size growers too ,and most from all accounts are getting a reasonable return on capital .There are over 850 vineyards in the UK and with
over 4000ha planted so it certainly has a great foothold . Landprices for suitable vine land are regularly 20-25k/acre for south facing chalk banks and unlikely to do anything than go up, as European investors buy land as our climate warms and in other climates the temperatures are starting getting too hot .Regarding price of English wines price points are always going to be an issue but the quality of English Wine is exceptional and as the scale of vineyards gets bigger I am sure the
price points will widen to get nearer the Chilean wine mentioned in the opening post .
 

Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
I suspect there may be a re-structuring of sites where the poorer vineyards are grubbed up and the better sites continue to be operated. There may also be a shift into Essex- the summers are warmer and drier there than in central southern England.

There’s quite a lot of marginally viable vineyards that have been planted by wealthy people who just like the idea of owning a vineyard but haven’t really done their homework.

Re: hops there’s a new hop garden been planted up towards Farnham which is quite interesting. I believe they are making a decent go of it.
Do you know what variety of Hops they have planted?
The last Hop growers around here have not sold all their last two years production and last year only put up two strings!!

The trouble is we aren't drinking enough decent beer and many of the micro breweries are using American and eastern European varieties for some of the rather unusual stuff they churn out.
I still prefer a decent pint of Harveys Best!
 

Bogweevil

Member
Do you know what variety of Hops they have planted?
The last Hop growers around here have not sold all their last two years production and last year only put up two strings!!

The trouble is we aren't drinking enough decent beer and many of the micro breweries are using American and eastern European varieties for some of the rather unusual stuff they churn out.
I still prefer a decent pint of Harveys Best!
Might it be perchance the very wonderful Tongham Breweries garden: https://hogsback.co.uk/pages/our-hop-garden

When I visited my very blurry recollection is that they used locally grown maris otter too.
 

Paddington

Member
Location
Soggy Shropshire
Might it be perchance the very wonderful Tongham Breweries garden: https://hogsback.co.uk/pages/our-hop-garden

When I visited my very blurry recollection is that they used locally grown maris otter too.
Visited Hog's Back brewery years ago and took up their challenge of being able to discern the difference between keg and wooden barreled Tongham Tasty (?). There was a lot of discernment that night.:happy:
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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