Yorkshire's Newest Vineyard

We’re still getting used to the idea of making wine in this country. Let’s face it, we’ve only been drinking wine commonly for about 40 years. The idea that we should be producing it, and producing fine quality wines, still causes some surprise. Believe it or not, Yorkshire is home to ten of the UK’s vineyards, and I was invited over to the newest of them one cloudy afternoon to have a look around.

Dunesforde Vineyard lies in the village of Upper Dunsforth, between York and Ripon. Proprietor and chief vinedresser, James Townsend, is a young man who grew up in village. Working for a year in Padua after university, he fell in love with the culture and the creative, co-operative atmosphere of viticulture. Several years later, and now the owner of his own vines, he still describes that time as “idyllic.” Although he returned to the UK to work as a teacher, he harboured a dream of returning to Italy to find a property where he and his girlfriend could grow vines and offer hospitality to visiting sports teams. He would create a cricket ground and field a team of locals and ex-pats against the visitors: school groups, stag weekends and sports club tours. You can take the lad out of Yorkshire…!

The problem with this dream, as James points out, is that northern Italy isn’t blessed with flat patches of land suitable for cricket, but the memory – and the dream – of producing wine from his own vines would not go away. Five years into his teaching career, he got a phone call from his Dad: a former paddock in his home village had come up for sale. It had a slight slope, so would drain well, and had never been used for crops, so the soil would be free from pesticides. This is the land I visited: 4 acres of vines, and a new-build, agricultural building that has the potential to become a desirable function venue.

James showed me the rows of different vines and talked with passion and knowledge about the varieties grown. Each variety has been chosen for a particular “gift” it brings to the wines he hopes to develop. Solaris ripens early and is resistant to many common diseases, making it the backbone of much English winegrowing. Its reliability has allowed James to try both still and sparkling wines. Bacchus is more temperamental, but it is this variety that causes James to become animated, when he talks about its potential to develop as a quality English still wine. He knows which side of his land has more clay, and it’s this clay that gives him hope of producing wines with interesting character and body. Because the site is slightly sheltered, the vines are not over-watered by rain, so a bit of clay in the soil forces them to work harder in the growing season. It’s this slow growth, coupled with the inevitable slow ripening so far north, that James thinks will elicit more complex-tasting fruit from the vines.

Dunesforde also grows two pinot grapes: pinot gris and an early variety of pinot noir. The pinot gris has been an experiment. It struggles in the English climate but can produce spectacular wines in the right conditions. The pinot noir has been used with others in the vineyard’s sparkling wine. James, like me, confesses a love of pinot noir wines and hopes the vineyard can use it to produce a sparkling rosé in time.

I asked James how he sees winemaking going in this country. He said he thinks we’re at a very exciting time. Because the industry is so young, it has little regulation for now, allowing winemakers to experiment and find out what works for them. English vineyards are not big, industrial concerns. They have low yields and high labour costs, so wine producers must ensure they’re making a premium product to justify the price. “This,” he says with a smile, “is a good time to develop a unique product.”

I’ll be writing more about Dunesforde wines, including tasting notes, in my blog next week. See blog.theaperitifguy.co.uk
To buy Dunesforde wines, go to their website: https://www.dunesforde.com/