Brightwell Vineyard (Brand)

OUR BRAND VALUES*

OUR COMMITMENTS*

Sustainability

Southern England has an ideal climate and soils for sustainable Vine growing and winemaking. Unlike many hot countries we don’t irrigate the vines at all. Our natural rainfall and moisture retentive soils mean the vines grow well with no artificial intervention, and all fertiliser used is natural.

Environment

We do not follow a bare earth policy but grow grass and nitrogen-fixing clover between the vine rows, allowing the vineyard to be a home to many creatures. With our surrounding trees we support many bird populations and every year have Kites, woodpeckers, pheasants, partridge, Kingfishers, Swans, ducks, coots, moorhens, buzzards, tits, wrens, …… nesting here. We also have a nature lake from which frogs, toads, newts, damsel and dragon flies emerge (if they escape the pike!). Everything grows in abundance here.

Local Communities

A vineyard provides a diverse and interesting addition to the landscape, that forms a point of interest for the community. People frequently come to show visitors ‘their’ vineyard, and ‘their’ wine. Using the land for a vineyard provides more than 10 times the employment as using land for arable farming.

Packaging & Waste

We reuse everything we can, and only use reusable or recyclable materials. Our boxes are made from recyclable cardboard and packed with pre-used materials. We refund 30p if you return our empty Brandy bottles to us for reuse. All our wine is bottled in glass which is recyclable and our cork closures are compostable. The residues from our winemaking are all composted and much is eventually returned to the vineyard.

Inspiring & Educating

We hope you find our revival of winemaking and vinegrowing in England inspiring (there were vineyards in England for 1600yrs). We are continuing to explore what we can produce in England and have pioneered the making of red wines and produced the first commercially available English Brandy. We now have apprentice winemakers from all over the world coming to work with us to learn their trade. We give talks to school (and older) groups on the natural chemistry of winemaking and for 8 yrs have had students from Belgium come for a 2 week stay over harvest to learn about wine chemistry

Energy Reduction

We use the minimum amount of energy we can – its expensive stuff! We don’t heat the winery so if you visit in winter wrap up well, as we do. There are optimal temperatures for different wine making processes, so we schedule these activities to fit with the seasons. Hot countries use a lot of energy to chill their ferments but in England our cool autumn evenings allow ferments to be naturally cooled by our sub 10c evening temperatures. During ‘cold stabilisation’ we need to take the wines below zero, so we do this in January and February when nature does the cooling for us.

Nutritional Values

Drunk in moderation, some studies show wine can help with a long life. Certainly it helps many people to have a happy life.

Animal Welfare

Obviously no animals are used in the making of our products which are vegetarian friendly. We do however have very happy dogs, cats, chickens, parrot and occasionally horses, alpacas, pigs and friends who enjoy the freedom of living at the vineyard.