Saturday 28 May 2011

Prince Charles' wine advice from Camilla

27 May 2011

Britain's Prince Charles asked his wife Camilla for advice on wines when the visited a wine estate in Surrey yesterday 

Britain's Prince Charles had to ask his wife for advice when the couple visited a wine estate in the UK yesterday (26.05.11).
The heir to the throne visited the award winning Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey, South East England with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall - whose father Major Bruce Chand was a wine merchant who passed on his love of the beverage to his daughter.
After taking a sip of the rose Charles joked to his wife: "What does our resident expert think?" and she replied "It's very good. That's so good it's absolutely delicious."
What does our resident expert think? and she replied It's very good. That's so good it's absolutely delicious.
The prince - whose mother Queen Elizabeth visited the site seven years ago - and the duchess were invited to the vineyard by its owner Adrian White who converted a pig farm into a wine producing site in 1984 by planting more than 300,000 vines.
Charles and Camilla were likely picking up tips on their visit after it was recently revealed the royal family are planning to make their own wine at Windsor Great Park.
Charles'father Prince Philip is reportedly involved in the project which aims to plant 16,700 vines in a section of the park in South England which was a former hunting ground for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
The vineyard will be planted with champagne varieties - chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier - with a view to making an English sparkling wine, with Master of Wine and viticultural consultant Stephen Skelton advising on the project

Friday 6 May 2011

Royal vineyards planted in Windsor

Royal vineyards are being planted this week in Windsor Great Park, organised and managed by Laithwaites – and overseen by the Duke of Edinburgh.
Windsor Great Park
Windsor Great Park (image: windsor-berkshire.co.uk)

A team led by Laithwaites chief executive Simon McMurtrie has leased the land from the Crown Estate and will begin planting 16,700 vines on three hectares of land within Windsor Great Park.

The 2,000ha park, 20 miles to the west of London, is owned by the Royal family and managed by Royal Farms, which has given Laithwaites its ‘full support’ for the project.

Royal Farms is a private business run by the Duke of Edinburgh, who is taking a personal interest in the project. ‘The Duke is the Ranger of the Estate and he has the ultimate say over what happens on the estate,’ McMurtrie told Decanter.com.

The vines planted will all be Champagne varieties: the majority Chardonnay, with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. The first vintage is expected in 2013, and the wine produced will be exclusively sparkling.

Stephen Skelton MW, a veteran of English wine and one of the first to plant vines in England, at Chapel Down in 1976, is part of the Laithwaites team organising the project.

The news that such a high-profile vineyard is being planted has given a massive boost to English sparkling wine, which is already riding a wave of popularity.

Some 4m bottles of English wine were produced last year, around half of it sparkling. The trade body English Wine Producers reckons there is 75% more land under vine than there was in 2004.

Other high-profile vineyards include Waitrose’s experimental plantings at Leckford Estate in Hampshire, and Decanter consultant editor Steven Spurrier planted just over 4ha at his farm in Dorset in 2009.
Both vineyards are Champagne varieties only, with the first vintages expected to be ready in two or three years.

Prince Philip to create royal wine

Rate this article

Britain's Prince Philip is reportedly planning to create a vineyard at Windsor Great Park to make wine for the royal family.

Britain's Royal Family are planning to make their own wine at Windsor Great Park.

Prince Philip - husband to Queen Elizabeth - is reportedly involved in the endeavour which aims to plant 16,700 vines in a section of the park in South England which was a former hunting ground for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

The vineyard will be planted with champagne varieties - chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier - with a view to making an English sparkling wine, with Master of Wine and viticultural consultant Stephen Skelton advising on the project, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Royal family to produce its own wine from Windsor Great Park grapes

Royal family to produce its own wine from Windsor Great Park grapes
 

But now the Royal Family is going one step further with plans to make an English wine of its very own, the Telegraph has learned.
This Sunday, or early next week, depending on the weather, 16,700 vines will be planted in a section of Windsor Great Park, the former hunting park to which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were so devoted.
The fledgling vineyard will be planted with champagne varieties – chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, too – with a view to making an English sparkling wine from grapes grown on this corner of Crown Estate.
The Duke of Edinburgh is said to be closely involved and it’s understood that Master of Wine and viticultural consultant Stephen Skelton – who planted the first vines at Chapel Down, now Britain’s biggest producer, back in 1976 – has been advising on the project, which has been greeted with great excitement by the English wine trade.
“It is quite simply the biggest boost the English wine industry has ever had,” says Bob Lindo of Camel Valley vineyards who had a royal visit in 2008. “It’s fantastic".

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Royal family to plant vineyard at Windsor

 Fizz from Sussex is often seen on the banqueting tables of Buckingham Palace; the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had wine from Chapel Down in Kent at their wedding and now the Royal family is going one step further with plans to make an English wine of its own.
Next week 16,700 vines will be planted in a section of Windsor Great Park, the former hunting park in Berkshire to which Victoria and Prince Albert were so devoted. The vineyard will be planted with champagne varieties - chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier - with a view to making an English sparkling wine.
The Duke of Edinburgh is said to be closely involved and it is understood that Stephen Skelton, a Master of Wine and viticultural consultant who in 1976 planted the first vines at Chapel Down, now Britain's biggest producer, has been advising on the project.

The scheme has been welcomed by the English wine trade. "It is quite simply the biggest boost the English wine industry has ever had," says Bob Lindo of Camel Valley vineyards who had a royal visit in 2008. "It's fantastic."
English wine is having quite a moment. As recently as 1984 just 325 hectares of land were producing grapes that were being made into wine but over the past few years there has been a significant increase in planting.
"It's not all in production yet but we've now got 75 per cent more land under vine than we had in 2004," says Julia Trustram Eve of English Wine Producers. "The official figure stands at 1,323 though we estimate that the actual figure is even higher than that.

"There's been a lot of investment in sparkling wine particularly," according to Trustram Eve. "People have really embraced it - and they've been planting a lot of chardonnay and pinot noir to make that. "In 2009 roughly half of the total grape production was intended for sparking wine of one kind or another. "
Figures released yesterday also show that last year English wine had its biggest year, producing the equivalent of just over 4 million bottles, breaking the previous record of 3.5 million.

The Windsor Great Park wine will be just a small drop in this English wine ocean. As vineyards take three years to produce grapes that can be made into wine, it will be quite a wait before anyone can try it.
But perhaps by the time Prince Harry gets around to getting married there will be a royal wine to toast the royal wedding.

ENGLISH WINE: Growing pains

English wine is undergoing a planting boom, especially in the sparkling segment. But will demand keep pace with supply? Graham Holter reports. 
 
emglish_wine.jpg Mark Driver surveys the East Sussex hillside he has bought, with its uninterrupted view of the Cuckmere estuary and the English Channel beyond. Soon, this quiet patch of chalk downland will be the site of the biggest single vineyard in Britain. The £1m winery, currently just a drawing, will be producing 1m bottles a year of Rathfinny Estate sparkling wine.

The former hedge fund manager paid a reported £3.5m for the 600-acre farm and will plant the first vines there next spring. Most of the vines will be Champagne varieties – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.

“We’re going in relatively slowly,” Driver says. “We’re planting up 50 acres, which gives us immediately the right sort of scale, and then we’ll build that up to 150 acres over the following two years, so by 2014 we’ll have 150 acres under vine. By 2015 we’ll be harvesting 150 acres and that’ll satisfy the first part of the winery.

"The following year we’ll see what’s working so that we can then adapt our plantings to make sure we’re planting the right clones for the following three years.

“It’s quite interesting: a lot of people say there’s a big oversupply of English wine, and yet we’ve already had one of the major supermarkets come and knock on the door and say: ‘Can we come and have a look at what you’re doing? We’re really interested – we cannot get enough English sparkling wine at the moment’.”
For the English wine industry, there’s something of a boom going on. Julia Trustram Eve, marketing manager of English Wine Producers, says the total area under vine has increased by more than 40% in five years.

Steady increase
“During that time we’ve seen a steady increase in planting of over 100ha per year,” she adds. “The kinds of people investing come from all walks of life. From landowners to businessmen; backgrounds ranging from law to banking and others. They are coming into this business with their eyes open – they realise that they have to make the business work.

“I would say that vineyard sites are getting larger now. The official data shows that the average size of a vineyard is bigger, although really there’s no such thing as an average-sized English vineyard. Individual vineyard sites are now starting more from 4ha upwards.”

Data compiled by wine consultant Stephen Skelton MW shows that, by and large, viticulture in the UK still happens on a small scale.

There are 180 vineyards less than 1ha in size, and the vast majority – 386 – are smaller than 5ha. Thirty-seven are between 5ha and 10ha, and just 18 are bigger than this. But there is clear evidence that English wine producers are thinking bigger.

“There are already several quite large concerns,” Skelton says, “and for the overall size of the industry, which is around 1,500ha, I think we have more than our fair share. Something like 70% of the production is controlled by 17% of vineyards.”

Bacchus and Seyval Blanc are still widely planted, but in recent times the “vast majority” of new planting has involved Champagne varieties, according to Trustram Eve. These now account for something between 45% and 50% of the total, EWP estimates.

Is English wine a profitable venture – do producers get a return on their investments? “Ask an Australian or Californian the same question,” shrugs Skelton. “Some do, some don’t, some don’t have to, some don’t care – it’s the same the world over. You can make money out of making and selling English wine, but you need to build up a good fan base and sell a lot direct. Chapel Down is a plc and they make money after a fashion. I am sure that Camel Valley makes money. I have several clients that think grape growing is better than many other crops.”

Anthony Rendall, who is currently planning a new vineyard and winery near Glyndebourne in East Sussex (see box), argues that English wine production is cheaper than in Champagne: “The sales price of English sparkling wine varies between 60% and 100% of the price of benchmark Champagne. Production costs, on the other hand, are significantly lower. For instance, the cost of grapes in Sussex during the October 2010 harvest was £1.20 per kilo, which is 20% of the price of comparable grapes in Champagne.

“In these conditions, it is now feasible to develop a highly profitable business by creating a prestigious brand and making an early claim on this relatively new and extremely promising market. Rather than compete on price and volume, we will concentrate on limited volumes of the highest quality product.”
His future near neighbour, Mark Driver at Rathfinny, argues that economies of scale are a key factor. “In order to make something a commercial venture as a vineyard you need a minimum of 50 acres; really it’s 150 acres and then it becomes a proper commercial venture,” he says. “Below that the economies just aren’t there.

“If you’re going to make your own wine, the investment in the winery itself is just so expensive and the cost of expanding that to accommodate extra acreage is so minimal, because it’s just tanks.”
Few, if any, now doubt that English wine can compete on quality, because producers like Nyetimber, RidgeView and Camel Valley have proved it can be world-class. But the longer-term question is whether supply will ever outstrip demand.

Stephen Spurrier, whose Bride Valley Vineyard is preparing to enter the fray (see box), says: “I don’t see supply getting too big for the moment, as the local demand is very strong. However, people like Nyetimber are looking at a million bottles in a few years, and that means exporting at least 50%. Not a business I would like to be in.”

Skelton adds: “My estimate is that the 500,000 bottles available now will rise to possibly 5m bottles by 2020. This is based upon current planted areas and if this continues to rise then so, eventually, will the production.”
This estimate would potentially give English producers 40% of the sparkling wine market in the UK, compared to the 4% they enjoy now. “A big ask,” he admits, “although in my view not an impossible one.” More wines priced below £20 would certainly stimulate sales, he argues, but simply making products more visible – a natural by-product of increased supply – would also play a big role.

“The demand is unknown,” he says. “What was the demand for Baileys, Red Bull, flavoured vodkas etc before they were invented? The demand will come when the supply arrives – until people see it on shelves, they cannot buy it."

Graham Holter, April 2011

English wine enjoys bumper 2010

A record amount of English wine, 4 million bottles, was produced last year as an increasing number of farmers turn to the popular crop.

English wine: Nyetimber vineyard
Nyetimber vineyard 
Though last year's harvest was marred by the cold and wet late summer, it proved to be good conditions for sparkling wine, which thrives in cool weather.
Figures from English Wine Producers, the trade body, said that 30,346 hectolitres was produced, equating to just over 4 million bottles in 2010. This is the highest volume ever produced, breaking a previous record of 3.5 million bottles and up from 3.14 million in 2009.
The substantial increase suggests farmers are starting to take the crop seriously, having increased the amount of land turned over to wine grapes by nearly 75 per cent over the last five years to 3,270 acres.
The extra vines have been mostly planted by, or by suppliers of, two of the biggest producers, Chapel Down and Nyetimber, both of whom specialise in sparkling wine. The figures suggested that over half of all the wine produced in England is now sparkling.
Another major new entrant is the supermarket Waitrose, which in 2009 started planting chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes – classic varieties used by Champagne producers – at its Leckford Estate in Hampshire. These vines will not start producing grapes for another year or two.

Monday 2 May 2011

Sales of English wines soar as Brits celebrate the royal wedding

A surge in patriotism was visible at supermarkets as well as street parties, with sales of homegrown goods rocketing.

The royal wedding created a £480million boost for shops with Waitrose reporting that its sales of English wines were up 82 per cent compared with last year. 

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 12:34 PM on 2nd May 2011
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1382680/Sales-Pimm-s-English-wines-soar-Brits-celebrate-Royal-wedding.html#ixzz1LCFyvXOz