Bolney Wine Estate, near Crawley, Sussex - 1st July, 2016

Having spent a wonderful afternoon and evening in and around Avebury and had a good night's sleep at a super B & B at Beckhampton, off we set. This morning with Sassy's hood up - it had been a wet evening yesterday and not looking too promising this morning and we had a long way to go! It was a good and interesting journey through Marlborough, around Andover and via Farnham and Guildford. Some old steps retraced and new ones found. We don't do motorways in Sassy. It's also interesting to inspect the state of the roads in little Sassy - some of them are really little more that tracks in truth, especially through towns where drains are often very poorly set in the roads!
And so we found our way to the Bolney estate!

A very impressive driveway led to a very new winery and visitor centre which has a balcony overlooking the vines. The vineyard has been here since 1976 (and possibly much longer according to some historical evidence) making it one of the oldest in the UK. The original 3 acres of vines were all white grapes and the main interest was to produce white and sparkling wines - many of which have won awards, more again this year. The Blanc de Blancs won a silver I believe...

The most popular white is the Bacchus, we have now heard at many of our visits that Bacchus is the leading English grape in popularity of sales. However, the Pinot Noir grape has also been introduced so red wines are now produced with much credit. The original 3 acres has grown into 39 acres! They also produce a red sparkling - might be worth a try?
One of the problems with our visits is that we don't always have time to take the tours and guided tastings as these tend to be an hour or more but we do seem to be beginning to recognise the grapes now. After a coffee in the very pleasant café overlooking the vines, some of which were quite young ones,

....we decided which to buy...I believe they grow 6 white varieties and 4 red. Today we took with us a bottle of Bacchus, a sparkling Blanc de Blancs and a couple of Pinot Noir,

some of which would be gifts for our hosts, leaving room for further purchases on this roadtrip! I'm afraid to date we haven't yet tasted the red so I will give you our thoughts after that.
And so onwards and eastwards into Kent....