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If you are both practical and someone with drive and determination – a typical ‘can’t sit still person’, then starting a vineyard and winery project in your sixties is perhaps not such a daunting prospect. Retiring from the NHS as a consultant rheumatologist, Melvyn Walters wasn’t intending to become a vine grower but the gift of a day out at nearby Bolney Wine Estate, Sussex in 2012 set him thinking “I could do this”. With south facing horse paddocks of sandy loam, looking across to the South Downs, the ‘terroir’ was similar to Bolney, and his two retired racehorses could be moved from the barn to new stables allowing space for a winery. Joanna Wood reports.

From the start of the project Melvyn has taken the view that independent research and going straight to the source of products is, for him, the best way to get great deals and save money. It has also been a lot of fun! Starting with a holiday driving around French wine regions he made contact with Loire nurseryman Gregory Gibault, who checked out his site and has since supplied all the vines, canes and rabbit guards in the

two planting phases in 2013 and 2014. A consultation with Stephen Skelton MW also reassured Melvyn his existing fi elds were a good prospective site. This is a very rare circumstance, almost a fairy tale story, as so many prospective viticulturalists do not by happy accident own land suitable for vines

WOODMANCOTEVINEYARD PROFILE

The main cost of each tank is in the bottom 2m or so and anything above hardly adds to the bill, Melvyn demonstrates.

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literally on the doorstep.A piece of advice Melvyn is happy to pass on to newbie vineyard owners is buy your tractor before you decide on the design and spacing of the rows. Sourcing a second hand specialist vineyard tractor (normally 1.2m wide and much narrower than most tractors) on the second hand market is “as rare as hen’s teeth”. To avoid buying an expensive new one, Melvyn recommends finding a second hand fruit tractor which can be narrowed to 1.6m and/or going for a wider row spacing to make sure there is plenty of room either side of the tractor to allow for inexperienced tractor drivers! Incorporating organic matter to improve soil quality is a one-off opportunity for a permanent crop like vines, so Melvyn was happy to find a local source of free compost from the municipal composting site which gives away the coarsest grade of compost. “It can contain plastic waste like the odd dinky toy” says Melvyn, but

he has doubled the amount of compost applied for his second planting as he is sure it helps with establishment and soil health. A soil sample test and a test on the compost was done by Yara prior to pre-planting incorporation.

Melvyn engaged well known German planting contractor Ernst Weis and his team to plant the vines with their GPS guided planting technology precision but elected to delay putting the trellis (metal posts and wire supplied by Ernst Weis) until the following year to spread costs. Buying a post driver, he engaged vineyard skilled Romanian workers via Vine Care UK to help him but as usual he was very much hands on with installing the trellis as organiser and tractor driver. For a small vineyard finding skilled temporary workers is difficult. The drawback of using agency workers, even from the better temporary staffing agencies, is that the workforce they supply has little

Luckily Melvyn Walters already owned a suitable south facing vineyard site overlooking the South Downs.

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understanding or passion for horticulture. This is where Vine Care Ltd comes in. Melvyn admits that in an ideal world it is better to install the trellis in the year of planting as there is nothing to tie the canes to and wind is a problem on an exposed site. One disadvantage of his site is that it is exposed to wind from both the south west and partly from the north east, being the highest piece of ground in the area and the windbreaks will take time to grow.As sparkling wine production is the ultimate aim of the project, Melvyn chose to plant the fi rst 1.1ha with 2,500 Chardonnay and 2,500 Pinot Noir for phase one in 2013 and then for the lower section of 0.66ha 2,500 Pinot Meunier in 2014. After deciding to embark on having his own winery and therefore to become a wine maker as well as a grower in 2015 Melvyn added 3,000 Bacchus and bit more Pinot Meunier to give him the chance to make some still wines giving a total of 11,000 vines.

Tips for installing a new winery At the start of the project Melvyn was not planning to build a winery or make

his own wine but courses at nearby Plumpton College convinced him it would add to the fun. The barn didn’t need much conversion after the horses were evicted, just more drains and fl oor levelling. Again he undertook research in Europe at trade shows and visits to manufacturers to get the best deals. He has used an Italian agent to help with his equipment search but has saved a lot of money by going direct. This will not be for everyone as you have to

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cope when a large piece of kit like a press turns up a day early on a lorry which has to be unloaded on the main road. With the instruction book wrapped deep inside the machine it was all a bit of a headache.

When buying tanks Melvyn recommends buying much more capacity than you think you’ll need (if you have the clearance height to accommodate them) as the main cost of each tank is in the bottom 2m or so and anything above hardly adds to the bill. He has installed a cooler unit and cold room and, after hearing the benefi ts of this for controlling fermentation at last year’s ICCWS in Brighton, he’s pleased with this decision. The fi rst small harvest last autumn of 225litres of juice from 350kg each of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and 50kg

of Pinot Meunier is in the cold room small tanks, the base wine for future sparkling wines.

Melvyn admits to being obsessional about getting things right and he is not afraid of bringing in modernisations where he thinks they could be useful. Unimpressed with using refractometers and hydrometers he has invested in a WineLab from QCL - a company specialising in quality control solutions for the food and beverage industry. The WineLab is a portable and easy to use analyser based on LED technology and dedicated chemistry test kits to provide full analysis of wine and grape juice. It was developed by CDR in Italy and has been widely used in the Italian wine industry for years.

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