BILL KNOTT
Drink Bill Knott
‘The only surefire way to make a small fortune from a vineyard,’ says David Gleave MW, ‘is to start with a large one.’
As founder and MD of Liberty Wines, he has seen many try, but few succeed. ‘If you buy an existing vineyard, you’ve got a chance. Plant your own vines, though, and you’ve got to dig a hole in the ground and wait at least four years before you can make any wine. With reds, if they need cellaring, it’s another two years after that. The phrase “sunk capital” describes it very well.’
Sobering words for those of us who dream of gazing over our own vines.
Philip Addis and Graham Hazell, the two main proprietors of Domaine du Grand Mayne, about 20 miles south-west of Bergerac, took the sensible option.
The spadework at the Domaine had been done nearly 30 years earlier by another Englishman, Andrew Gordon, who had taken the rundown estate and transformed it into a successful business.
His wheeze was called Wineshare: selling leases on rows of vines to British wine-lovers in exchange for a guaranteed supply of well-priced, well-made wine.
He sold the business in 2008. The estate stagnated for a few years until Addis and Hazell took over in 2013, launching a successful crowdfunding campaign the following year and again in 2018.
‘Actually,’ admits Hazell, ‘I heard the vineyard was for sale, and – in a moment of weakness after a couple of glasses – I bought it. Then I realised I didn’t know anything about wine; so I persuaded Philip to come in as my partner.’
Addis’s background was as a wine merchant: he owned and ran Great Western Wine for 27 years, selling it in 2010. ‘I had too much time on my hands,’ he recalls. ‘Looking out over the vineyard from the terrace at the back of the house, after the second or third bottle, I got suckered in.’
Besides the estate, they had two other major assets: an Excel spreadsheet with details of the old Wineshare clients – Addis discovered that many of them still had ‘a strong emotional attachment’ to Domaine du Grand Mayne, and were keen to become shareholders – and the talents of winemaker Mathieu Crosnier, who had carried on making high-quality wines despite the estate’s decline.
Crosnier, together with South African winemaker Martin Meinert, makes wines from classic Bordeaux varietals – Sauvignon Blanc and a splash of Sémillon for the whites, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon for the reds – and jolly good they are, too: generously fruity in an almost New World style, yet with the complexity of good Bordeaux.
And, when circumstances allow, you can visit the estate itself: guests can even rent accommodation. There are barbecues every Friday evening, attracting a mix of tourists and locals. ‘The butcher is local, the cheeses are local and so is the band,’ says Hazell. ‘We wanted to get away from being perceived as an English-owned vineyard.’
He has a few pieces of advice for aspiring vineyard-owners. ‘Don’t do it unless you’ve thoroughly researched the business, and you know where the buyers for your wine will be. Find a partner with complementary skills to yours. And understand that it’s not always plain sailing: after the first hailstorm, the romance disappears, and you realise that you’re actually a farmer.’