MY GOAL WAS TO DRINK MY OWN WINE ON MY 50th

NICKY FORREST, 50, owns a food and drink brand communications agency and lives with her husband, Nick Beart, 57, an entrepreneur, and their daughters Emma, 14, and Lottie 11. She says:

WHEN I turned 50 last month, I celebrated by drinking sparkling wine grown in my own vineyard.

Sipping the cold, crisp bubbles with my husband, the evening sun on our faces as we sat on the terrace overlooking our flourishing vines, I knew it had been worth all the hard work.

I had met many people in the wine industry through work and decided it might be fun to try planting a home vineyard. Then aged 45, my goal was to make wine to share with friends and family on my landmark birthday.

We had bought our country house, set in fourand-a-half acres and worth around €2million, two years earlier in 2014, and I earmarked the half-acre flower garden for my vineyard.

But I knew I’d have to get cracking if I wanted to uncork the first vintage on my 50th, as it typically takes three years for new vines to yield good enough grapes to make wine.

After doing a week-long course about vinegrowing costing €700, I invested €550 on 300 pinot blanc vines, imported from a specialist nursery in Germany.

They arrived in May 2016 and a local expert and my younger daughter helped me to hand-dig little holes a metre apart and put them in the ground.

I do all the pruning and tending by hand and my mum, who is in her 70s, often joins me. My husband pitches in to help spray the vines with pesticides using a ride-on mower we bought for €5,500.

Between December and February, we cut back the vines. In the spring, we rub away any surplus buds. And, in summer, there’s four hours of pruning to do every week. After a day at work, it’s a wonderful antidote to any stress.

In October 2018, I excitedly harvested my first vintage and took the grapes to a local wine-maker where I crushed them with my bare feet.

They were fermented and bottled last spring, and then a secondary fermentation took place in the bottle. That gives sparkling wine its bubbles.

I’ve called my wine The Hog after the lane where we live. There were 150 bottles of it.

I sent them to friends and family by courier. Then they joined us on video-conferencing app Zoom for a wine-tasting.

It is fresh and yeasty, with apple and pineapple notes, and everyone said they were impressed. We could store it for a few years because we don’t plan to sell it — but I suspect we’ll drink it well before then!