White Castle Vineyard, Llanvetherine, Abergavenny - 12th August, 2016

It's been a while since we made our last vineyard trip so we were excited today to try out another Welsh one - not too far from home, and an excuse to have a drive in Sassy again! We have had a busy summer so far - lots of fun and not too bad weather. And we have revisited Kerry Vale in the meantime - and tried out some of our wine stash at home! Bolney and Chapel Down are still popular with us..

Robb and Nicola Merchant are the owners of White Castle vineyard and what a great job they are doing. They followed their dream and planted their first vines in 2008 and now have 5,000 vines in their 5 acre vineyard.

They have 6 grape varieties, 3 each of red and white - and I got the feeling that might not be the last......Currently their wine is made and bottled at Three Choirs, Newent, with its great experience it is the chosen winery by a lot of the new vineyards.

We arrived unannounced at the cellar door, open Friday-Sunday, on what ended up being a really busy day for them. We tasted 2 reds and the rosé. They also make a white wine and a Regent red, Robb's favourite! Rosé was our first tasting and it is a really good flavour and colour, perfect for a lunch drink, tasty. Then we tried the Rondo and that too is very impressive and not unlike the Rondo we have tasted at Llaethlliw and Kerry Vale. Then the Pinot Noir - and that is really good, slightly oaked which is to our taste -we found it a really good wine.

Nicola provides an excellent lunch platter of Welsh cheeses and salad which we enjoyed on the balcony of the lovely visitors' centre overlooking the vines sloping down towards us before choosing which wines to take home with us - Pinot Noir was top of the list!

Robb is now Chairman of the Welsh vineyards association so is very busy - but obviously really enjoying himself. He is well placed for vine advice as the national vine collection with over 450 grape varieties on offer, is just down the road from him! He was telling us that there are now over 700 vineyards in the UK - the number just keeps growing - a bit like our medal count at the Rio Olympics! Brilliant all round - looking unlikely that we will get round all of them any time soon!!! An enjoyable challenge though...