![\"Sharpham](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2017\/02\/sharpham-valley-930x698.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Anyone who\u2019s spent time in many of the region\u2019s eateries will be familiar with Sharpham\u2019s wines. In particular, their award-winning Sharpham Dart Valley Reserve is a familiar sight behind many a South Devon bar and adorns the tables of a number of its high-end restaurants, particularly those with locally-oriented menus.<\/p>\n
Intrigued by the story behind the bottle, I visited the Sharpham Estate near Ashprington to learn more from its Head Winemaker, Duncan Schwab. He greeted me in Sharpham\u2019s enticing shop before we found a seat outside \u2013 and after that the words flowed freely.<\/p>\n
![\"Duncan](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2017\/02\/Duncan-Schwabb-930x653.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Duncan\u2019s relationship with Sharpham began in 1992. He began to tread the not-so-well-worn path from surveying to professional winemaking 10 years before, when he helped his father survey potential planting sites for a new vineyard in Cornwall.<\/p>\n
Duncan\u2019s assistance began to broaden until he was helping his dad with every aspect of growing vines and making wines. He decided to leave surveying behind and make winemaking his future.<\/p>\n
Back then barely a handful of English vineyards had the capacity to hire anyone. But Sharpham just about could, and Duncan was employed just at the point the operation was about to expand.<\/p>\n
\u2018At the time there were very few vineyards in the UK,\u2019 he told me. \u2018We needed to do trials in order to see which varieties suit our climate. You can\u2019t just ask Uncle Frank how he got on with his Pinot Noir back in 1924, you have to put them in the ground and see what happens yourselves.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We had a trial site of a couple of acres and planted 10-15 different varieties to see what would suit the climate. From there we discovered that Madeline Angevine grapes from the French Loire were what suited it best.\u2019<\/p>\n
Before we move on, let\u2019s rewind a few decades to the very beginning. Sharpham vineyard and cheese dairy\u2019s journey began in 1960, when Maurice Ash purchased the Sharpham Estate. He brought with him what turned out to be a winning combination of farming knowledge, business acumen and a love of all things French.<\/p>\n
It was mainly the latter characteristic that gave Ash his ambition to produce wine and cheese that could rival those produced by our continental cousins. Ash set about bringing in a herd of Jersey cows and growing various varieties of grape on a couple of trial sites. They were still experimenting when Duncan arrived, and indeed continue to do so to this day.<\/p>\n
Both the vineyard and the cheese dairy have moved on immensely, with 15 varieties of wine and seven cheeses produced, an al fresco Anchorstone caf\u00e9 on-site and popular tasting tours offered seasonally.<\/p>\n
The market has seen radical change since Duncan\u2019s early days at Sharpham, and he ponders what it was like back in the early 1990s compared with today: \u2018at the time there was one other vineyard in Devon and now there\u2019s 25 \u2013 in the UK they are increasing at a rate of 40 a year, there\u2019s now about 600 vineyards across the country. Between all of us, we produce about three or four million bottles of wine.\u2019<\/p>\n
Four million bottles sounds like a lot, but Duncan emphasises that in fact it\u2019s still very small. In France, there are individual vineyards that produce more than the entire UK wine industry!<\/p>\n
\u2018When we started off, English wines had a slightly dubious reputation \u2013 sometimes quite rightly, with people making wine without really understanding it \u2013 and it\u2019s taken us the best part of 30 years to work out how to do it, what varieties work best, what blends to put together and what yeasts are best to ferment on. So there are numerous things you have to learn.\u2019<\/p>\n
And Duncan believes that now, far from being harmed by our country\u2019s lack of a great wine-making culture, Sharpham actually gains from the publicity that comes from being distinctive. \u2018Especially on the awards front, English sparkling wines are going up against Champagnes and beating them in competitions. People that come here to taste a few wines and leave with a crate having absolutely loved it. So I think English wine is definitely separate \u2013 people ask is it like French or German wine and we say, \u2018No, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s an English line with its own character.\u2019<\/p>\n
The expansion of the vineyard and the development of their award-winning wines owe a lot to their willingness to embrace trial and error and learn from other winemakers from all over the globe. But it\u2019s also been helped by the natural endowments of this beautiful stretch of the Dart Valley. The vines sit on the Estate\u2019s south-facing slopes, which act like a deck-chair says Duncan, angled towards the summer sun in a way that enables the soil to soak up more of its heat. Other aspects of the environment have also tilted the odds in their favour, such the mild South Devon microclimate and the extra sunlight that reflects back up from the River Dart. They augmented these natural advantages by planting rows of trees to act as windbreaks.<\/p>\n
\u2018Our climate is getting slightly warmer\u2019 Duncan told me, \u2018and our season is getting longer, and there\u2019s definitely a difference between the acidity we had in our early days and the acidity we have now. So everything starts earlier and goes on later. Particularly in the South West, we\u2019re not a frost-prone site, which is beneficial for us as well. So we\u2019re able to ripen our grapes over a nice long period very much like our apples in the south west. A long ripening period is the best thing to encourage our fruit.\u2019<\/p>\n
Most Sharpham wine is consumed locally, while their cheese often finds its way around the country. \u2018It\u2019s expanded organically over the years,\u2019 says Duncan. \u2018The cheese has become bigger and bigger since the time it was made on the kitchen table in that the butter content was too high. It\u2019s very, very creamy. So they did various trials and ended up making a sort of Brie-style cheese which has been very popular. That\u2019s our biggest brand on the cheese front.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Since then we\u2019ve gone onto goats\u2019 cheese and sheep\u2019s cheese which we get from local producers on the moors. It\u2019s unpasteurised cheeses so they do change, unlike pasteurised cheeses which kill all the bugs. We flash pasteurise them so it kills off the bad bugs but keeps the good bugs, so it\u2019s a live cheese. It\u2019s sold up and down the country, and we sell some to America as well.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sharpham has won several awards for its wines and cheeses \u2013 including several based on blind tasting, for which reputation counts for nothing. Their impressive list of awards includes as many as 220 regional, national and international commendations since 2010. There\u2019s been no Eureka moment it seems, just decades of testing and learning until the awards finally started to arrive and the wine \u2013 now around 100,000 bottles of it in a good year \u2013 began to fly off the shelves. In a typical year, about 40% of these leave the estate in the boots of its visitors\u2019 cars.<\/p>\n
\u2018We don\u2019t produce very alcoholic wines,\u2019 Duncan explained. \u2018Most of wines are about 10 or 11%. What we do is produce very nice lunch-time wines which are very refreshing and crisp.\u2019 They produce the full range of wines with whites, ros\u00e9s, reds and sparkling varieties all represented, meaning visitors can discover their favourites and learn about the differences.\u2019<\/p>\n
Visit Sharpham to sample some of their refreshing range and pick up a few bottles, have a bite to eat at the Anchorstone Caf\u00e9, and take in one of the most picturesque stretches of the Dart Valley.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2016\/10\/cookbook-square.jpg\")
Have you downloaded our free