There’s a group on Facebook called Travelling Winemakers – Living the Dream. For those inclined, it offers a tantalising way of life, earning your living (or at least funding your adventure) by following the wine harvests across the world, from Australia to Europe to California. “They’re often quite young, lots of them are doing ‘hemisphere hopping’, so they might come over here after a full-on Australian harvest,” says Mary Bridges. “You look at them and think, ‘You have a great life!’ And they bring good experience because they’re making wine in all those different styles.”
By “here”, Mary is referring to a small corner of Kent, where she is Head Winemaker at Gusbourne, having joined when someone dropped out of the harvest crew on the vineyard. She could also be describing herself – living the dream by playing a major part in helping to establish English wine as a serious proposition on the international stage. Having found her calling in the winery side of the business, her role involves a meticulous process of “tasting, testing, crafting and perfecting”, employing everything from cold data to natural palate and personal taste to create the perfect blend.
“We will assess the wines to work out on paper where things fit, and then you put together a trial blend, using a little bit from various different tanks, and taste it, and then you’ll think, yeah this is really good but it needs a bit of this... It’s such a fun process,” she says. “Once we’ve set on what the blends will be and we start working on the physical processes of putting them together, filtering them and getting them ready to bottle, there’s a new energy. And then four years come round and they’re released. I just love it."
Jon Pollard, Chief Vineyard Manager, knows all about the patience required to develop the product from the vine to the bottle, having joined as “employee number one” when the vineyard was first planted in 2004. “We didn’t have our first harvest until 2006,” he recalls. “That’s then made into wine and bottled and four years later we’re ready to sell it. So that’s quite a long journey. Our first vintage year was 2006, and it’s only then you’re truly working in partnership between the vineyard and the winery. Before then you’re making fruit and waving goodbye to it. You can be reactive in some ways, but it’s a very slow burn. I suppose that’s my excuse for taking time to make decisions. Good things do take time.”
Jon’s approach is a case study in letting nature be the ultimate guide – working with the land and encouraging biodiversity through complementary planting and sustainable practices. A gentleman’s agreement with a neighbouring sheep farmer means “the shepherd gets the benefit of grazing in our vineyard and we get the benefit of weed control and the manure input!”
The beauty of such a young industry is the fact that the learning curve on all sides is constantly evolving. “Even if we’re doing something well I like to ask, why is this blend so great?” says Mary. “You start to pick that apart and pinpoint what’s important to our process. The excitement you feel within the industry is great – it really is there. And it’s nice that people are seeing that from the outside and picking up on it.”
“There’s always been something very exciting just around the corner at Gusbourne,” Jon adds. “The new vineyard being planted, the winery coming on line... then the potential in the coming years to plant more vineyards. It’s never stood still.”
> Photography by Sam Walton
