Vines

This section is under construction

These pages on the cultivation of the vine for wine-making purposes are purely personal ones based on my experience of growing vines in the South of England and Northern France for a total of around thirty years.

I'm not an expert, just an enthusiastic amateur! If these pages help you then that's good. But you may have tips to share with me and I would welcome that!

I was given my first vines cuttings back in 1976 by another amateur, Dr. Idris Thomas, who had a vineyard in Wales. This was in the early days of the revival of viticulture in the United Kingdom. The cuttings he gave me were of the Seyval Blanc variety, known then as Seyve-Villard 5/028, and I grew about half a dozen vines from these cuttings at my home West Sussex. In 1980 I moved to Caversham and brought with me cuttings of the vines I had established. These are now established as mature vines in my garden and against the south facing wall of my house.

In 1990 we bought a house in Normandy which had a mature Chasselas vine against the back wall. That winter I took a hundred or more cuttings and began to establish a small vineyard in my garden (the house has around an acre of ground, most of which is a cider apple orchard). At first my Norman neighbours thought I was completely mad! "You can't grow grapes in Normandy," they said, "it's too far north!"

After three or four years I harvested my first crop there and gave my neighbour half the vintage. Well, he did look after my kitchen garden - when we were there we had the vegetables, when we weren't he had them. It was a very good arrangement. But he was amazed at the wine and proudly opened bottles in the company of his friends. Now they consider us to be English eccentrics rather than completely mad!