PRE-HISTORY – the winemaker’s perspective

I am the second generation winemaker for the family business, having grown up on the vineyard and gradually taken over the production side from my father. However, the story of Carr Taylor Vineyard can be traced right back to the tea gardens of Darjeeling in North East India.

My grandfather, Richard, was looking to train as an engineer in the 1920s. As the depression had already had an impact on the UK employment market (sounding uncomfortably familiar writing this in 2009), Richard took a gamble, buying a one way ticket to India to follow up possible work opportunities there. He trained as an engineer in the tea gardens of Northern India, and within a few years was running one in Darjeeling.

At this time, Dorothy and George Duplock were running the local Gymkhana Club in Darjeeling, the centre of the social life of the ex-pat community. Richard courted their daughter, Lois, and they were married in Darjeeling in 1935 with great pomp and circumstance – the King and Queen of Nepal were amongst the ‘local’ dignitaries who attended the celebrations, held in the Gymkhana Club’s magnificent ballroom.

Richard and Lois had two children, Rosalind and David, my father. They grew up as comfortable speaking Hindi with the Indian and Nepalese plantation workers as they were speaking English with my grandparents.

When partition came in 1947, the family was forced to flee the new regime. They came back to the UK and settled in East Sussex in the early 1950s. Richard used his experience to set up an engineering business in the old town in Hastings. He bought a large Elizabethan country house overlooking a 21 acre farm that had previously been owned by the equerry to the Queen Mother. After leaving school, David joined his father’s engineering business, and specialised in the then novel concept of under-floor heating.



On a skiing holiday in Austria, my father spotted a beautiful smile under a mop of hair surrounded by suitcases, and instantly fell in love. 18 months later, Linda and he were married, and my sister, Antonia and I arrived a few years later.

When the farm came up for auction in 1969, Linda and David acquired the site and the various farm buildings. For the first two years, my parents continued with the existing crops of corn and hay, but it wasn’t as rewarding as they had hoped, either financially or in any other sense of the word. With my father’s entrepreneurial mind still fired by childhood memories of the tea plantation, my parents decided to search for something as pioneering and enterprising as Richard’s tea garden exploits had been at the beginning of the last century. They weighed up the various options for the crops they could plant, considering everything from the unusual such as cress or lavender to continuing with more traditional crops such as wheat. They had the soil analysed which showed a free-draining sandy soil rich in iron ore minerals, with a thin layer of clay shale. (The iron ore in the soil is a reminder that cannonballs were smelted in Sussex in the Napoleonic era). On the back of this analysis, the final short list was narrowed down to onions, white roses or vines. In the late 60s, early 70s, the idea of growing vines in England was in the throes of infancy. Only a handful of vineyards existed, most of which were based on the expertise of the experimental Ray Barrington Brock, a research chemist, who was instrumental in introducing varieties such as Müller-Thurgau and Seyval Blanc to the UK in the 1950s.

However, Linda and David realised the opportunities that grape growing would give and decided that it would certainly be a great deal more fun than grain or livestock would be. And so one of the longest established commercial vineyards in England was born.

HISTORY

We started planting the 21 acre farm site with vines in 1971, converted part of the farm buildings into a house and the rest eventually became the winery, shop and bonded warehouse. As time went on and demand for the wines grew, we have planted an adjacent 16 acre site in the early 1990s, bringing the total area of vineyards to its current 37 acres.

Having taken the decision to plant the site with vines, we had to choose varieties and the method of growing the vines. Over the first six years, from 1971 to 1977, the 21 acres were gradually planted up with modern German varieties chosen for their ability to ripen in our cool climate. The majority of the grapes are white, but some Pinot Noir and German red varieties such as Dornfelder were also planted. (For more information on the varieties, see vineyard.)

That was the ‘what’, but we needed to decide ‘how’ to grow them. Ever the pioneer, my father’s engineering background came to the forefront again in working out a suitable method for training the vines. David adopted a High Wire Trellis System which, as the name suggested, trains them to run along wires that are approximately 5ft above the ground level. The principal reason was to try and minimise the potential damage from ground frost in spring and early summer. Another, ancillary, advantage of the system is that it makes life less back-breaking for the grape pickers, who do not have to double over in quite the same way as they do for instance in Champagne where the vines are not much higher than waist level.

As well as continuing to run the engineering business, David embarked on a correspondence course on winemaking, and gained some work experience in the Rhinegar region of Germany.

A vineyard is not a short-term project. The vines do not crop for the first couple of years, and it takes a good 5 years for the crop to be of any commercial value, and a further 5 for the vines to truly come to their full potential. It was in the glorious summer of 1976 that the vineyard produced its first commercial crop. I was seven years old and remember the buzz of excitement that we all felt. It was very much all hands on deck – friends and family were roped into picking the grapes at weekends, for payment in wine months later when it had been fermented and bottled, and a record breaking 2 tonnes were picked that year! (Average crops have since been 40-50 tonnes with the most prolific crop being 150 tonnes in 1983!) However, although the crop was not large, the quality was already very good.

Friends and family who helped with the 2nd harvest in 1977 including Richard and Lois (centre), Linda and David (centre left) and Alex (Me!) (bottom, third from the right)

Initially the grapes were sent up to Lamberhurst in Kent (for whom we ended up making wine for a brief spell). David had been continuing the engineering business along side the vineyard, but after 5 successful harvests, he took the decision to commit to the vineyard as his main concern. By this time, the scale of things had increased to the point where it would have been more expensive to continue to have someone else make our wines, so a winery was installed in one of the former stables. Initially, our wines were made by Clement Nowak, a Polish-French winemaker based in Champagne. He gradually taught David, and then me the fascinating craft of turning grape juice into wine.

As our experience matured, the wines started developing their now distinctive English character; crisp and aromatic, with delicate citrus fruit notes. It wasn’t long before they started winning a variety of prestigious awards. The awards started in 1983, with our 1981 Gutenborner winning a silver medal in the 1983 International Wine & Spirit Competition, the 1982 Kerner Huxel winning Bronze at the English Wine of the Year and the 1982 Schönburger winning a Medaille D’Or in the Challenge International de Vin. Since then we have won over 130 awards!

In 1984, following the biggest crop the vineyard has produced, we decided to take another pioneering step, and were the first commercial vineyard to produce traditional method sparkling wines that have a second fermentation in the bottle (Champagne in all but name). Like many aspects of winemaking, this is a long term project as it takes several years before the wines are ready for consumption, as they lie on the lees for up to 3 years in order to maximise their flavour and texture.

Once again, the wines were immediately successful and in 1988, the first year’s production of sparkling wine, the Vintage Sparkling Wine was awarded a gold medal at the prestigious Concours European des Grands Vins beating 1,800 champagnes and traditional method wines from around the world. We won a bronze in 1991 and a our 1996 vintage was awarded gold in 1999, this time out of 4,300 entrants! We have deliberately focussed on creating a different product to Champagne. Although we use the same method for our sparkling wines, we use different varieties grown in a different soil. The way we make the wine concentrates on maximising those differences to produce a fruitier, more flavoursome wine rather than trying to emulate Champagnes.

I became the winemaker from 1992 after getting first class honours in Agriculture at Reading University. I met and married Jacqie, in 1999. 12 months later we left to work a vintage in New Zealand and then in Oregon, in the States. On our return, I studied for the Diploma at the Wine & Spirits Education Trust in London, and was lucky enough to be awarded the Vinters’ Scholarship, traditionally awarded to the top scholar by the Vintners Company. The award enabled us to visit the winemaking area of our choice, and Jacqie and I had a wonderful tour of the Stellenbosh and the other vineyards surrounding Capetown in South Africa. All this overseas experience has brought new outlooks and inspired new ideas in my winemaking. The New Zealand vineyard was one of the largest in that country with thousands of tonnes picked and processed each year, split fairly equally between red and white. The Oregon vineyard was much closer in size to ours, but with a latitude and therefore climate much closer to Burgundy, the dominant varieties were red, especially Pinot Noir. We discovered that there is a great deal of competitive spirit in these two very different worlds which can be summed up as Pinot Envy! Winemakers vie amongst themselves to produce and be accredited with developing the finest Pinot Noir wines – and we did taste a few absolute corkers, if you’ll pardon the pun. If climate change delivers a consistently warmer climate, I would love to be able to branch into the production of red wines, but realistically I think the climate will remain best suited to the deliciously fruity, crisp, fresh whites, and particularly sparkling wines, that we can make so well here.

Ours is very much a family business, and my sister, Antonia, and my wife, Jacqie, have joined the office/sales side to continue the Carr Taylor name and help promote and evolve the business. There are plans afoot to modernise different aspects of the shop, winery and office. We are also in the midst of a replanting project of part of the original 21 acre site. We are replanting varieties such as Schönburger and Gütenborner that have not performed quite as well as other varieties with Bacchus, which is a delicious, versatile white grape that lends itself wonderfully to both still and sparkling wines. If you are interested in more details about the varieties we have planted, there are more details in the vineyard section.

Although English wine is still seen as an up and coming industry, the Romans got there first (of course). In fact, in 286AD, they decreed that any surplus should be shipped back to Rome. A considerable amount was produced, with vineyards extending as far north as Hadrian’s Wall at one time, and even then, the wines were deemed worthy of export. Although Champagne has secured for itself the ultimate reputation for sparkling wines, records show that an Englishman had used the traditional method for sparkling wine of a second, bottle fermentation several years before the feted Dom Pérignon began his experimentation.

I have inherited my parents’ passion for wine, which they inspired and helped develop over the years. Everyone working in at Carr Taylor Vineyards is enthusiastic about English wine in general and in particular the wines we make. We are always happy to welcome you to our beautiful vineyard, and delighted to talk you through tasting all or any of the wines we make here, something I hope we will continue to do for many generations to come.