National award for Yorkshire Vineyard
A YORKSHIRE vineyard has garnered a national award.
Little Wold Vineyard was honoured for its farm diversification project to produce a vineyard at South Cave in East Yorkshire.
The Farmer’s Weekly accolade tops off a 10 year journey for the farm which followed owner Henry Wilson and his wife’s visit to South Africa.
Having witnessed the nation’s vineyards the idea of planting vines was born, although initially viewed as a retirement project.
The farm is situated on chalk soils with southern facing slopes and so in 2012 they planted the first of 2,000 vines.
As the grapes began to grow over the ensuing five years, Henry’s son and daughter Tom and Alice returned to the family farm to help develop the work, laying out an ambitious plan to plant 2,000 vines per year as well as taking on the management of an established vineyard in Doncaster. In 2016 the first vintage of Little Wold wines was and the farm now produces five still wines and two sparkling wines, with a third sparkling to be added in 2021.
The wines have continuously won awards including a Wine GB trophy for the Poppy Hill Rose in 2020.
Alice said: “To be shortlisted for a national award came as quite a surprise. To win in this category was simply incredible. I think it brought home the sense of how hard the whole family has worked to put us in a position to be considered. I look at the size and scale of some of the people we were against and the sense of pride and emotion at winning was such a shock. We cant wait to display our award in our new tasting room.”