Discover the verdant vineyards of the rolling South Downs
Enjoy a gentle adventure with Dixe Wills as he spends three blissful days cycling between the idyllic vineyards of the South Downs
Anice dry Wimbledon,” Hugo Corney told me as we stood in the vineyard he runs with his parents, “means a good harvest.”
It was one of the many things I learnt about wine-growing on my four-day bicycle tour. On a south-facing slope, cradled by the chalky South Downs, the Corneys’ Court Garden Vineyard is a snug little place steeped in history – it was farmed back in Saxon times and once belonged to Cluniac monks. Now it produces fine sparkling wines and has a whole vatful of awards to prove it.
The day before, I’d packed my pannier with a few essentials – the waterproofs were to come in very handy – and set off to visit six of the best vineyards on the South Downs, taking in some of the National Park’s historical highlights along the way. My quest to learn about English sparkling wine would involve a journey of 110 miles (177km) and five muscle-toning climbs up and over the Downs.
My odyssey began in Hampshire. Alighting from the train at Portchester, I pedalled north to famously the Cradle of Cricket (the village side beat England 29 times back in the day) and, less famously, home to the oldest-surviving commercial vineyard in Britain.
“Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones first planted vines here in 1952,” Hambledon vineyard’s Steve Lowry told me, “after seeking advice from the Champagne house Pol Roger.”
The vineyard became quite the attraction in the 1960s, with 10,000 visitors a year coming to see the novelty of grapes growing on English soil. For decades, only still wines were produced, but when biochemistturned-financier Ian Kellert bought the vineyard in 1999, he was unimpressed with their quality and knew something would have to change. The answer lay beneath his feet, for the South Downs are on the very same band of chalk that stretches beneath the Channel and encompasses France’s Champagne region. Ian was about to become a leading light in a movement that would revolutionise English wine.
ANCIENT BOOZE
Pressing eastward, I came to Butser Hill – at 271m (889ft), the highest point on the South Downs. Below its crest lies Butser Ancient Farm, a fascinating open-air museum where buildings from England’s primitive past have been faithfully recreated. It was here that I hoped to learn about the nation’s earliest brushes with alcohol.
“I HOPED TO LEARN ABOUT THE NATION’S EARLIEST BRUSHES WITH ALCOHOL ”
“The Neolithic Age saw the start of cultivation of crops and cereals,” the farm’s Rachel Bingham told me, “and that’s where you get beer production, with airborne yeasts inadvertently starting off the fermentation process. It’s the same with wine – juice from wild vines lurking at the bottom of a container start fizzing…”
There was apparently an extensive Roman vineyard in Northamptonshire, but it has been impossible to date the ancient terraces discovered on the South Downs or identify what crops may have been grown on them.
Digesting this slightly disappointing news, I battled north-eastwards through antediluvian rain – overtaken by a low-flying and similarly soaked buzzard as we passed together through a tunnel of trees. Arriving at Upperton Vineyard, owner Andrew Rogers was waiting for me with a welcome cup of steaming coffee. It seemed a good opportunity to talk about the climate.
“A lot of the English still wines were pretty awful,” Andrew began. “The main reasons why that’s no longer the case are British winemaking, which has improved