Vineyards of the North

The earliest evidence of grapes in the region is the presence of seeds at a Romano-British site near Wellingborough, Northants. There, evidence of parallel trenches and plant roots suggest that there may have been viticulture in the area.
The Venerable Bede in his History of the English Church wrote that Vines are cultivated in various locations How accurate this statement is is not known, but it is likely, according to Skelton (2000) that any monastries ultivating vines in the north would have been burned by Viking invaders. Certainly, the Norman Domesday Book gives no examples north of the Wash.There is evidence, however, that the great Mediaeval monastries of the north grew vines for communion wine. However, these disappeared when Henry VIII closed them in 1536
Great houses grew vines in glasshouses for table use, but there is virtually no mention of wine making until the Twentieth century.

In the 1970s, northern vineyards were rare.Major Rook planted at Stragglethorpe in Lincolnshire in 1964. Sir Reresby Sitwell first planted at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire in 1972 and included a few Pinot Noir. The following year, 500 Pinot Meunier were added. These are traditionally grown in frost pockets along the Marne valley of France, and Sir Reresby believed that they should thrive in Derbyshire. In 1975, 6 bottles of red wine were produced. The early drought and the late rains of 1976 were not favourable for the production of good grapes, and the cool summers of the following two years even less so. By the time that Stephen Skelton published his first book in 1989, only white varieties are recorded at Renishaw.

In 1973, John and Ruth Daltry planted an organic vineyard at South Kilworth in Leicestershire and still run it. Keith James established Bodenham in the Welsh Marches in 1974 and the Baches at Astley near to Stourport-on-Severn in 1979. Since then, global warming and the development of new German varieties has led to a great increase in the area of viticulture. most are still in sheltered locations, but these are slowly spreading northwards. Even red wine is produced, as the Pinot Noir vines at Welcombe Hills, near Stratford on Avon bear witness. Currently, the most northerly commercial location is Ryedale Vineyard, near Malton in Yorkshire. Lancashire and Cumbria are still deemed too wet and cold, but, if vines can be grown in Sweden and Latvia, there is every hope for those areas.

Useful background reading