Sally Coulthard

People used to be so sniffy about British wine. Now, thanks to the concerted efforts of a handful of dedicated vineyards, home-grown wine is one of our country’s most sparkling jewels. I’m often asked how realistic it is to grow your own grapes in this country. The answer depends on what you want to do with them and where you live. The quick response is to say that anyone with a greenhouse can grow dessert grapes – ie grapes for eating. Ideally, these need to be grown indoors, in a greenhouse or conservatory, where they can properly ripen to their full sweetness. Or, if you don’t want to be endlessly watering your vine, you can plant it outside and, through a hole in the glass or wall, train the vine inside. We did this with our tiny greenhouse – it took a superhuman effort to drill a large hole in the galvanized metal at the base, but the vine shot up like a triffid and we were eating juicy grapes within a few years. You can grow dessert grapes outside in the UK, although the further north you are, the less likely they are to fully ripen. My mother-inlaw in Wiltshire grows them well on a southfacing wall but we’ve never had much luck.

What we can grow, however, is wine grapes. Ryedale, where we live, has the most northerly commercial vineyard in