Dunkery Vineyard

Dunkery Vineyard is located in the beautiful Exmoor National Park, near the village of Wootton Courtenay. It is close to Minehead, Porlock and Dunster. At Dunkery Vineyard, now the largest in Somerset, we grow more than twelve different vine varieties, including five red grape varieties.

Our vineyards share an abundance of wildlife; red deer, roe deer, badgers, foxes, pheasants, partridges, buzzards, green woodpeckers, long tailed tits, goldcrests and flocks of goldfinches are regular visitors. It is a great pleasure to see these and have such magnificent Exmoor views all around us. There are few wineries in Europe that have such high quality winemaking equipment as we have.

We make our wines in the classical way, with the minimum of processing, so that the natural grape flavours come through in the wine. The quality of a wine depends primarily on the quality of the grapes at the time of harvest. A great deal of effort and skill goes to ensuring that our grapes are harvested in as near perfect condition as possible, within the limits imposed by our English climate. One advantage of our climate is that the wines tend to have lower alcohol, which means they are easy to drink.

Dunkery Vineyard

At Dunkery Vineyard we have 7 acres of vines, planted between 1984 and 1993. The original 'small' vineyard, of one acre, has an exceptional micro-climate due to the very sheltered site and the close planting of the vines, only 4 feet apart. The site is one of the steepest in England, there are more than 1,250 vines and the spraying and vine-topping has to be done with back-pack equipment. It is one of the few sites in England never to have suffered spring or autumn frost damage.

The vines are trained on the classic Double-Guyot system. The varieties are Madeleine Angevine, Senator, Kernling, Reichensteiner, Schönburger, and the red grape varieties Pinot Noir and Dornfelder. Individual varietal wines are made when practical, their character and flavour benefit greatly from the Devonian red sandstone soil, which is one of the classic European vineyard soils. Summer and autumn night-time temperatures are relatively cool in this vineyard (partly because the South-South-East facing slope loses the evening sun) and this enables the wines to have fine racy acidity.

The 'large' vineyard, of six acres in the lee of Dunkery, is less sheltered and relatively flat. It's great advantage is that it catches the sunlight all day long, sunlight on the vine-leaves causes the photosynthesis which ripens the grapes. To take advantage of the extremely bright light, the vine hedge rows are set East-West. To increase the leaf-wall even further, the modified-Silvoz training system has been chosen, with 2.5 metres between rows and 1.6 metres between vines. The main vine varieties planted are Kernling, Reichensteiner, Madeleine Angevine, Chardonnay, and the reds Pinot Noir, Dornfelder, Regent and Rondo. Harvesting takes place from late September through to early November. Summer spraying, against botrytis and powdery and downy mildews, is terminated at least five weeks before harvest, so there is no chance of any spray residue reaching the wine.

The winery at Dunkery Vineyard is situated at the small vineyard, and is dug into the hillside. After harvesting, the bunches of grapes are destalked and crushed with state-of-the-art equipment, and subsequently pressed very gently in a rubber-membrane press. Stainless steel tanks are used for fermenting the grape juice and maturing the wine; in fact almost all of the equipment is made from stainless steel for ease of cleaning and sterilisation.

For our white wines we often leave the destalked berries overnight in special sealed stainless steel tanks. This rarely used method of 'skin-contact' extracts more flavour from the grapes than if they are pressed immediately. Our red wines are fermented 'on the skins' for 7 to 14 days according to the variety. We 'rest' our red wines for at least 2 years and we have ten 225 litre oak barriques in which the wines 'mellow' for at least 6 months.
For our sparkling wines we use 'whole-bunch' pressing (without destalking/crushing), which extracts a smaller amount of juice but gives a very clear juice essential for quality sparkling wine.

We produce 'Quality Sparkling Wine' (EU regulations terminology) using the traditional method of secondary fermentation in individual bottles - as practiced in Champagne. Trials with the variety Pinot Gris (1987) produced astonishing results, and our 'Exmoor Brut' is comparable with fine Champagne. It was this experience that led us to plant one third of the new vineyard with the principle Champagne vine varieties - Pinot Noir and Chardonnay; only certain vine varieties can produce the special character of Champagne, which is a completely different sensation from other sparkling wines.

More than a third of the new vineyard is dedicated for red wine production. Out of more than 100 wines submitted for the June 1993 'Decanter' blind-tasting of 'Pinot Noir from around the world' our 1990 vintage Pinot Noir red wine was awarded one star, 27 other wines were listed in this category including some Gevry-Chambertin and Beaune from individual domaines in Burgundy, Australian wines from Rosemount, Tyrrell and other top producers, and wines from Carneros, Chalone and other famous vineyards in the USA. More than 36 of the wines in the tasting were awarded no stars at all. A remarkable achievement for our first red wine. Our red wines from the 1995 and 1998 vintages were even better, and those from 2000 and 2003 should be better still.

If you are in the area why not make an appointment to visit us and see the vineyard. Or buy our wines by mail order or through various retail outlets. The OS Map Grid Reference is SS 941 434.  An aerial photograph (and map) of the vineyard can be viewed on www.multimap.com (find TA24 8RD and the vineyard/winery is exactly in the centre of the photo). We have seven acres of vines and one of the finest wineries in England.

Dunkery Vineyard wine label

Contributed by: Ellis Franks