A vineyard has become the FIRST in the UK to commercially produce a Sauvignon Blanc wine from grapes grown on its own estate.
Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey planted the Sauvignon Blanc grapes four years ago on the three acre trial plot and this is the first year they have been harvested.
The green grapes originate in Bordeaux in France, but improving weather conditions means they can now be grown successfully in England.
“We have been very pleased with this year’s harvest and we hope to have the Sauvignon Blanc bottled and ready to sell by next summer,” said Christopher White, general manager of Denbies, which is in Dorking. “In the last 20 years we have seen a direct benefit of changing weather conditions on the wine industry in the UK and we have been able to grow some varieties of grapes which were never possible before. Sauvignon Blanc is a very popular wine and it’s nice to think it can now be produced in the UK.”
This year the vineyard has picked one tonne of Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which will make around 1,000 bottles of wine. The grapes have now been pressed and the juice has gone into oak barrels for fermentation, which takes around a month. It will then be put in stainless steel vats and left for eight months to mature, before it is bottled and sold next summer.
“As it’s the first year we can only pick a small amount of grapes so we don’t over stress the vines,” added Christopher. “Next year we hope to be able to pick three times as much. We have been extremely impressed with the flavours and how well it has done.”
This has been one of the latest harvests ever for the vineyard, which lies in a sheltered bowl of land opposite Box Hill and is the largest privately-owned vineyard in the UK. A milder Autumn has allowed vineyards to leave the grapes out on the vine for longer this year.
“We have had a huge volume of grapes this year so they have taken longer to ripen and we wanted to leave them for as long as possible for optimum quality,” added Christopher. “We nearly always finish our harvest by the end of October so it’s very unusual to still be out picking now. It has been a very good year for the grapes, after two poor years when it was very wet and cold. We didn’t have any frost at the start of the season, and a sunny summer has meant that we have experienced favourable conditions throughout with all the early potential come to fruition.”
Mr White said this year’s bumper harvest was particularly good news in light of the fact the world is facing a global wine shortage. A recent report by America’s Morgan Stanley financial services firm said demand for wine “exceeded supply by 300m cases in 2012.”
