May 2004

Sedlescombe comes of age!

"ENGLAND'S first organic vineyard has come of age and is celebrating 21 years of wine production.

Founded in 1979 by Roy and Irma Cook, Sedlescombe Organic Vineyard will this year bottle its 21st vintage'.

Roy and Irma Cook with their new Regent Red wine Having achieved full accreditation with the Soil Association in 1982, Roy is now fermenting the organic vintage from the outstanding harvest of 2003.

Some 3,500 bottles will be produced of the first oak-rnatured organic red wine in the country - to be on sale from July.

It is made from the Regent grape, a relatively new variety which, according to Roy. 'Produces a hot climate style of wine in a cooler climate.'

"It is full-bodied, rich, powerful and dark in colour - everything a red wine drinker wants to drink!" he continues.

Like the wines it produces, the vineyard has also improved with age. Roy became interested in an organic lifestyle after growing up

on a dairy farm and becoming aware of the problems of modern farming in the late 1970s - intensive methods producing a surplus of food.

Several trips to successful wine growing regions in Germany - with similar weather to that of Sussex - led him to make the decision to grow organic wine.

"We went to various wine festivals in Germany and that inspired us to get involved," he remembers. In the beginning, people used to come in and say 'But surely all wine is organic?' because it wasn't as well known.

"We acquired more land in 1999 and we now have thousands of vines."

Roy's next mission is to make people aware of 'wine miles'.

"Everyone talks about 'Food miles', how far your food has come to get on your table, but what about the wine? It is much better to enjoy local produce than something that has been shipped thousands of miles from the other side of the world," he added.

Re-printed courtesy of

Also Inside: 2003 Vintage goes into bottle. Battle Express May 8th 2004.

2004 Frost Free Bud Burst

= Bumper Harvest - Again?

Bud Burst on most varieties occurred during the third week of April, which is about average for U.K.

There is then a critical period of a coupleof weeks when overnight frost can cause huge damage - wiping out up to three quarters of the crop for the coming year. As you can imagine, this is a jittery time for the wine grower and his family. What he doesn't want to see when he looks at the weather map on TV or in the newspaper is high pressure over iceland to the North West and low pressure over Scandinavia. These are the conditions which feed cold arctic air down from the north and these are likely to give rise to the dreaded overnight frosts.

Ideal weather conditions during this frost risk period is westerly airflow with showers.

When the weather is like this we can sleep easy knowing that when morning comes the vines potential will still be intact.

The problem with frost is that any preventative measures are ruled out as either too logistically difficult or too expensive. This is because it is possible (likely, even) that if the right meteorological conditions occur, there may well be two or even three consecutive nights of frost. The length of time each night when the air temperature gets below 0 'C could well be upt to four or five hours or so. One method which has been tried is to have lots of fires in and around the vineyard and create enough heat to keep the air temperature above 0'C.

But you can see that an awful lot of combustible material would need to have been placed in the vineyard beforehand and on 16 acres (the toal size of our vineyards) a small army of people would need to have some temperature sensitive alarm system to getthem up in the middle of the night when frost threatened, to go out and light all the fires. And, on top of that , nine years out of ten there would be no need to light the fires and all the combustible material would have to be burnt anyway or removed from vineyard.

Another method invloves covering the vines. A hundred years ago this used to be done with straw matting. Nowadays, lighter materials such as paper or polythene can be used - But again the logistics - having enough material and people to get the material in place quickly, when needed, means this method too is fraught with difficulty. The unpredictability of frost just compunds the problems.

To successfully combat frost the vineyard would need to invest in the material and have people on call to cope with an event that 9 years out of 10 doesnt happen. In reality what most vineyards do is just resort to simple prayer. The last resort - the resort of the hopeless, which is exactly how this possible event seems to the vinegrower.

Luckily, this year, so far at least the good old showery, westerly airflow is dominating the weather during the frost risk 'window'. In the 21 vintages which we have done here at Sedlescombe, two have been badly affected by frost : 1990 and 1997.

On 7th May 1997 overnight Frost wiped out 75% of the crop. This date co-incided with the election of Tony Blair as Prime Minister. Surely just a matter of mere co-incidenece?

At this time of year there is lots going on in the vineyard. In our case this year there is even more than usual. This is because we still have two acres left to prune - a job which in an ideal world we would have had finished a month ago. As we have not had a vineyard manager since Peter left last September, we have been relying on WWOOF volunteers and there have not been enough of these to keep up with the task. After the vines have been prunded, the fruiting canes then get tied on to the wires in position ready for bud-burst and the growth of the new shoots. We still have over 5 acres to "tie down". Then , there is weed-control.

We use either straw or a black plastic mulch under the vines to surpress weed growth. But we still need to clean along the plastic in some places and to strim nettles and docks which grow through the straw mulch. We have hardly started on this work yet!

Next is the tractor work, such as pulverizing the prunings currently laying on the ground in the alleyways between the vines, mowing the grass and dealing with the green manure crops grown between the vines. It is also time to apply the first sprays of the year. Two sprays of sulphur are applied at 10 day intervals just after bud burst to kill off any powdery mildew spores that may have survived the winter.

When all these jobs are done, we will need to do "bud rubbing" which invloves hand rubbing to remove any unwanted buds either on the trunk or on the canes of the vine.

Repairs need to the trellis system may not get done until June - a job which ideally would be done in the winter. Another pressing job in Springtime is planting new vines. Altough we are not planning any major new plantings, we do need to "gap-up" by planting new vines into gaps where previous years plantings have not taken successfully.

WINEMAKING

The 2003 wines are ready for bottling now! Last weekend our new Regent red wine was pumped out of the barrique oak vats where it has been maturing for the past 4 months. All that is left to do now is to make 2 or 3 small additions of sulphur dioxide (anti-oxidant) to make sure the wine does not go brown and age too quickly. We plan to bottle it at the end of May and in time to send off samples for the Quality Wine Analysis and Tasting in June. As this is the UK' first organic oak-matured Red we will be creating a lot of media interest by sending out Press Releases in preparation for the launch of the Product at the National Organic Food & Wine Fair at Ryton Gardens, Near Coventry on 10th July 2004. Our Media Person Richard Widenka who also runs our Farmers Market stall at Lewes, Battle and Tunbridge Wells has had some notable successes recently in getting Sedlescombe into the News.

As you may gather, dear Reader, Spring is a busy time for a wine-grower!

All these jobs are without taking into consideration all the organization needed for bottling the wine (deciding on the bottles, corks & labels) and all the work needed to tell everyone out there about our lovely wines (by e-mail, letters and going to Farmers Markets & Shows).

We have just been to Leeds Castle last weekend, which was a bit dissappointing because the weather was quite poor.

End Of May we will be at the Heathfield Farmers Market and Beginning of June there will be the South of England Show. That should be lots of Fun! Maybe you are somewhere near there, come and see us or see us here at the Vineyard!

We also had a lovely Guided Tour at the Weekend. 41 members of the Cambridge Society, Berkshire Branch came to see us, have Walk around the Vineyard and Winery and tasted all our wonderful Wines. So if you are a member of any Clubs or Society, maybe you fancy coming for a lovely time in the Sussex Countryside?

Or if you have any free time at all, maybe you fancy a bit of WWOOFing ? (www.woof.org.uk)

WINE International magazine features Sedlescombe 2002 Dry white.

"Its 25 years now since Roy and Irma Cook established Britains first organic vineyard near Battle. The climate isn't the easiest in which to farm without the help of synthetic fertilisers, and herbicide sprays but the Cooks have shown that not only is it possible, but it can also yield some lovely wines (and ciders and fruit juices). The 2002 Dry White is a lively young wine with a zesty grass and elderflower aroma, hints of honey and grapes and a crisp clean finish -89 POINTS. And if you enjoy it, you might consider renting a row of vines in the vineyard".

Simon Woods (Master of Wine)