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December 2007

Festive Season Offers & News:

Wine Gifts & Gift packs shipped direct

Choose from our new range of 1, 2 & 3 bottle GIFT PACKS!

Order by 10AM Friday 21st Dec. for delivery to UK Mainland before Christmas

For other EU Countries by 10AM Monday 17th December.

Order online or FREEfone 0800 980 2884

Greetings!

Welcome to our Christmas 2007 Newsletter!

In this issue I will be introducing our fabulous 2006 organic English wines as well as the new gift packaging you can now buy direct from our website. We'll also be revealing our pioneering new "Rinse & Return" scheme for re-using wine bottles, which will further reduce the carbon footprint of our wines and juices.

Richard Widenka, our media person and Farmer's market specialist has come up with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at running local markets, and as usually for us at this time of year, there is a big Special Offer this Christmas. How does a free bottle of our newly bottled sumptuous organic (20% vol.) Blackberry Liqueur sound? Just order 11 bottles of Sedlescombe organic wines or liqueurs and we'll make up the case with a FREE bottle of this very popular liqueur and deliver free of charge! (UK Mainland). We can now ship EU wide, so if you want to impress some Continentals with a gift of a bottle or two of English organic wine now you can!

AND, to top it all, you can get a further 10% OFF if you make use of the coupon at the bottom of this email. Offer ends 15th December.

If you are looking for something really special this year for a wine-loving member of your family just check out our Rentavine.co.uk club. Join someone before 15th December and we'll include a FREE bottle of Sedlescombe organic wine along with their membership pack!

Have a really great Festive Season and a healthy, happy New Year!

Roy Cook (Proprietor & Winemaker)

Farmers' Markets

-Taste before you buy !

In addition to our vineyard shop, on-line store, organic retailers and distributors, one of our longest established ways of selling our products is through the Farmers' Market. In the years before on-line shopping the opportunity to put our wines directly before the public were limited and the advent of the Farmer' Market was seen as a great way to expand the business. In fact just as we see ourselves as pioneers of English organic wines, we also can make a similar claim as supporters of these markets.

The Farmers Market concept essentially brings local producers directly into contact with their customers. The deal cuts both ways - the customer gets to know how, where, when and by whom the item they are buying was produced and producers get a larger slice of the profits for their labour. (For many hard pressed farmers these days this can be a lifeline).

There are now over 500 Farmers Markets in the UK - many of them overseen by FARMA (Farmers' Retail & Markets Association) which sets the criteria for participation and inspects and issues certificates for each market. Basic rules are that the items on offer were grown, reared or produced within a specified distance of the market (30miles typical) and that processed items (like our wine for example) have a high proportion of local ingredients ( nearly100% in our case!). In London, where the number of Farmers' Markets has more than doubled in recent times, the distance from producer to market is, for obvious reasons, greater (100miles from M25). Incidentally, the environmentally concerned may wish to note that while the distance travelled by food to the table is expressed these days as "food miles", we at Sedlescombe prefer to talk about "wine miles" in reference to our own products.

My work for the Vineyard includes responsibility for running our Farmers' Markets stalls at Lewes, Tunbridge Wells and my home town of Battle.

(Market days 1st Sat., 2nd & 4th Sat. and 3rd Sat of each month respectively). I need to get up early to get the stall erected and dressed in time for the 9AM start at Lewes and Tunbridge Wells while on the 3rd Saturday I can laze about in bed until 6.30am!

In Battle, the farmers' market is held on "The Green" in front of the historic Abbey and its 1066 battlefield. It seems to me that most Battle and Hastings residents do not rise early on Saturdays, so any new stall holder might start to feel a bit suicidal before the eventual appearance of a customer. After around 10.30 however attendance is excellent, with numbers regularly swelled by visitors to the Abbey. These visitors too include "regulars" like the farmer from Scotland who stocks up each year with our Blackberry Liqueur and a lady from the Hebrides island of Muck (pop. 45) who takes home a bottle or two of our Dry White.

I have yet to meet "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" at its market which is held twice a month at the top of the High Street by the Town Hall. The retired colonels seem to have given way to a much friendlier and somewhat cosmopolitan population; my customers include Poles, Russians, Americans, New Zealanders, Swiss and, wait for it, -even French!

In Lewes, the farmers' market is held at the top of Cliffe High Street close to Harvey's picturesque brewery. Lewes is my biggest market with over 40 stalls offering a wide range of local produce. My overriding impression of Lewes is the hardy nature of my customers who seem to turn out irrespective of weather conditions. A growing number of customers at all three markets are vegetarians who are pleased to be told that none of our products contain animal products and are approved by the Vegan Society.

One of the many attractions of attending a Farmers' Market is the possibility of tasting some of the produce before purchase. I usually have a bottle or two of our whites open and sometimes even a bottle of our traditional method Bodiam Brut sparkling wine. I have also recently been sampling our 2006 Regent red, which has now softened and is maturing beautifully in the bottle. Our Black Cherry wine has always been a favourite (try it with soft cheeses, paté, lamb or best of all - crispy duck!) and our Apple Wine is a great favourite too, especially for serving as an accompaniment to pork dishes. A great attraction now, during the cold winter months is our Mulled Wine - warmed on the stall and sold by the cup or available in bottles to take home (for after that Boxing Day walk maybe).

Richard Widenka

NOTE: Here are some comments from Customers to the 1st Farmer's Market held at Battersea High Street in November:-

" Just what we need". (8); "Excellent" (3); "I've been asking for this for months " (1); "When is the next market?" (7); "I no understand; Why no fish?"; "I like the produce"; "Are you coming every week?";

Here is a list of the Farmers' markets that we'll be attending in the run up to Christmas:-

Alexandra Palace, Battersea, Battle, Chiselhurst, Dulwich, Epsom, Hilly Fields, Lee Green, Lewes, Stoke newington, Tunbridge Wells, Waterloo.

Another lucky Winner!

Pictured below, with his case of award winning Sedlescombe Wines, is Richard Browning, of Tey Brook Farm near Colchester, where he and his family run a mixed organic farm growing cereals and vegetables alongside a herd of pedigree Hereford cattle. Richard has a thriving retail operation based on his farm shop and an expanding box scheme operating in and around Colchester. He was the lucky winner of the prize draw organised by Ilex Organics at this summer's National Organic Cereal Events organised by the Soil Association.

Ilex Organics Prize Winner Richard Browning

Rinse & Return

Another first for Sedlescombe! Returnable wine bottles are being trialled by Sedlescombe Organic Vineyard as the business strives to stay in the forefront of efforts to 'save the planet'.

New labels carrying the following important green message have just been printed:-

Please RINSE & RETURN this bottle.

This label is made from 100% recycled paper and has a special peelable glue enabling us to re-fill used bottles. Re-using bottles rather than smashing them for re-cycling saves 40% more energy*, minimizing our carbon footprint!

(* Friends of the Earth).

Initially they are trialling this new label on 4 products only:-

Mulled Wine, Grape Juice, Blackberry Liqueur and the '07 Cherry wine. ALL (except '07 Cherry wine) Can be ORDERED direct from our online store.

Website facelift

Alex Cook (17) eldest son of Sedlescombe's founders Roy and Irma Cook, has been upgrading our website. He has installed attractive new product images and a photo gallery, bringing to life some of the tumultuous events of recent years here at Sedlescombe. Throughout the summer Alex also carried out tractor driving tasks, such as mowing. At present studying for A-levels he hopes to get a place at either the London School of Economics or University College, London to study economics next year. In his free-time Alex is a pretty mean tennis player. Contact him at:- webmaster@

englishorganicwine.

co.uk

Competition Winner

Christmas is coming early for John Brooks the lucky winner of our competition to guess how many bottles in one pressing from our 1912 antique basket press. A case of wine is on its way John!

Harvest 2007

In a word'appalling'

From just over 1 acre in 1983 we got almost as much wine as we got in 2007 from 22 acres! Last years harvest was 10 times the size of this year's! The deluge at the end of June and early July which came as the vines were flowering meant that the fruit just did not 'set'. The little bunches simply turned brown withered up and dropped off. A very depressing situation for us all here at Sedlescombe. The only glimmer of hope is that the harvest from last year was so big that it may just be enough to see us through until the 2008 wines are released sometime in 2009. On the other hand we could easily run out of stock before next Christmas.

Let us send out your Christmas gifts for you!

Check out our new range of colourful gift packaging available from our online store. We can send out your gifts for you AND we'll include a greetings card with your own personal greeting inside!

We would like you to forget the summer just gone and remember the summer of 2006! Lots of warm sunshine interspersed with generous downfalls on a regular monthly basis -just the right conditions for grape vines to crop abundantly! We had our largest crop ever, 30,000 bottles! ALL 2006 whites are tasting really well now that they have had nearly 9 months in the bottle, in particular the Oaked White (dry) from our new Solaris grape, and the Bodiam Harvest (medium dry). Both will go well with any lighter style foods you maybe serving over the holiday. For something a bit more weighty to go with more traditional Christmas fayre then we recommend the Regent oak matured RED - a real stunner!

This year due to all the rain at flowering time we'll manage barely 3,000 bottles from the 2007 grape crop. So with lots of wine on offer at discount prices, NOW is the right time to stock up. We reckon by this time next year our stocks will be at rock bottom for all our wines.

So, here's the deal:-

Order 11 bottles of English Wines/Liqueurs and get a FREE bottle of our Sedlescombe Organic Blackberry Liqueur AND make use of the coupon below for an additional 10% OFF. Delivery included at no extra cost!

Merry Christmas!

Roy Cook

Sedlescombe Organic Vineyard

FREEfone 0800 980 2884