Denbies Wine Estate, Dorking, Surrey - 6th February, 2016

Belated Happy New Year!
Much English wine was sampled from our collection over the Christmas festivities. Favourites so far? Well - for whites we have found Walton Brook's Solaris hard to beat. Reds are still more tricky - red English wine will probably never be a Bordeaux now will it? I think the Llaethlliw is Chris's favourite and mine is Kerry Vale's - a close run thing! For me the best rosé so far is the Polgoon....

So after the very wet winter, we were looking forward to visiting our youngest daughter in Surrey - particularly myself as it was my Christmas treat - a spa day at Nirvana Spa on the 5th which was wondrous. I can most certainly recommend some time in the celestial flotation pool!
We decided that as the weather was still not brilliant, a vineyard trip would be a good choice - not that I did great persuasion - would I ? It is several years since we visited Denbies and took the little train trip around the vines. We discovered today that the winery was opened about 1993 so it must have been around that time. I remember that at that point we were not impressed really by English wine - it has come a long way since then! It is now one of England's largest wine suppliers!

It is a very impressive location. As well as the winery, it offers a huge shop and restaurant, caters for weddings - indeed there was a wedding taking place today. There is also a gallery which we looked around with pictures by local artists. We duly booked our tickets and were very lucky to do so - it was very busy. As the tour wasn't for a couple of hours, we took the opportunity to visit the Surrey Hills Brewery which is a microbrewery at the rear of the building - and sampled their offerings!

They make 3 brews ranging from very hoppy to a pale ale and tasty they were too.

We are trying to convince Richard that beer is preferable to lager - it's our northern roots! After a pleasant lunch alongside the wedding guests, we gathered in our group for the tour - there were over 20 of us, some having just a tour and tasting 3 wines, others having tasting and nibbles!
The tour started with a 360˚ cinema information film about the history of the wine estate here which was very interesting, if a little dated. Vines have been grown here for probably as long as people have lived here and it was in 1986 that vines were replanted here by the Denbies family. The vineyard is more or less at the foot of Box Hill. It is a natural place for vines to grow with its chalky outcrop, just like in the Champagne region. Those vines required for sparkling wines - Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay love it here. Recent breaking news on the wine front is that Tattinger have just bought a large amount of land in Kent to compete with English sparkling wines - we have taken so much of the market from the French champagnes. There's success for you!
We then had a walk through tour of the winery with lots of detail told to us by a really good tour leader - she was a real character and has been working with the family for a long time - very knowledgeable about the grape varieties and the market. The map of the vineyards which we saw at the tasting in the cellar, shows where each grape variety is planted. I'm afraid I can't remember now how many varieties they grow but if you study the map they are all there.....

Denbies is a big supplier to several supermarkets and shops but it still sells most of its wine on their premises. The stainless steel wine vats are from South Africa and another bit of detail was that 1 ton of grapes makes 650 litres of wine!
Of course in February there is not much to see in the fields.....so the tour is all indoors.

Denbies has 627 acres of land - some of it is woodland too. At this time of year the pruners are very busy - there are 11 of them and they walk 350 miles each on their pruning work. On a good day, there are plenty of walks to take, amongst the vines and in the woods. This is a Denbies picture of some of their vines with Box hill behind...

Our tour finished in the cellars where there are several barrels in here each with their own carvings.

These barrels were made from trees which had to be felled after the 1987 storm by an Austrian cooper. Another trade which is in short supply these days.

 We now had 3 wines to taste - what a hardship! First was the sparkling, demi sec.

Sparkling is not a speciality of ours but our daughter thought it really good...those cellars are really impressive too..

Next it was a white, I believe it was Surrey Gold but I am not writing this immediately after the visit....it was very pleasant too...and indeed is I think the most popular English white at the moment..

And the last was the rosé, Chalk Ridge Rosé which was a nice light wine, lovely for lunches...

Denbies do now offer a red but only when the season is a good one - Redlands. We had a small taste in the shop and took some home with us but haven't tried it again yet so I don't have a firm opinion about it yet...

So another good day at a vineyard. It is a very impressive visit and the busiest we have had so far. It is great to see them being so successful.....looking forward to the next visit already!