A drink with… Sam Linter
Current chair of WineGB, Sam Linter is winemaker at Bolney Wine Estate, the Sussex winery founded by her parents Janet and Rodney Pratt, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Her daughter Charlotte has followed her into the family business as tourism manager.
‘Nobody really knew what they were doing in the late 1960s and early ’70s in the UK. We had a massive learning curve. I remember it being really challenging to grow high-quality grapes in the UK at that time. We didn’t know anything about canopy management, or the soils to plant on, or vine spacings, or any kind of vine husbandry.
‘I did not want to follow my parents into wine! So my parents sent me off to do an apprenticeship and the first one I could find was hairdressing. But I really hated it, and my mum was going through quite a bad time and she said: “Can you come and work with us?” So I did.
‘The climate has changed. The summer goes on much longer than it used to, and spring is earlier. When we first started growing vines the vines budded so late that the frost was well and truly over. Now our bud burst happens right in the middle of the frost season. Back then, frost was a one in 20-year event. Now it happens every other year.
‘A family business becomes a lifestyle. It’s not just a nine-to-five job. It becomes a passion, where you’re thinking about it, and talking about work outside of work, and working outside of work as well.
‘In the late 1990s I believed it would be really cool to make still red wine – and people told me I was bonkers. You can’t make still red wine in England. So I thought wow, now you’ve told me that, I really want to prove you wrong.
‘We used to have a cellar door here in the ’80s and you’d get one or two people in a week that just happened to drive past. It was a very rare occurrence. But now we probably get about 70,000 people through a year at Bolney.
‘I wanted to look at the format of WineGB and ask how I can change the board to reflect the diversity that’s happening within our industry now. There’s so much diversity in winemaking, wine styles, people in the industry, ideas that people have got. And it’s great.’
For the full interview by Julie Sheppard, see decanter.com