A Vineyard in North Wales? It's Not Warm Enough!

The original plan was to establish a small commercial vineyard in Andalucia in southern Spain but a combination of circumstances dictated that it finished up being fifteen hundred miles away on an island off the North Wales coast. The first few vines had actually been planted on a gardening whim in our field in Anglesey a few years before but they were totally mismanaged and eventually produced a small amount of unremarkable wine. Despite this somewhat insipid achievement the idea for the Andalucian project was spawned (surely it would be easier in a better climate!). Well, the climate in Spain is definitely better suited to producing grapes but the regulations weren't! Undaunted by the disappointments there and now more determined, I learned a bit more about this delightful, infuriating profession and then thought that I could, in fact, probably do it properly in Anglesey. So Red Wharf Bay Vineyard became unexpectedly into existence. You would have to say that it's a bit of an unlikely tale, indeed it became a bit of a saga. Then I thought I wanted to tell people about it because I think there's a story worth telling and I like telling stories, because I have enjoyed it (am enjoying it) and because I think it's a good story (but you must be the judge of that). Here you are then, the tale of how it all unfolded.

Auteur

The day-job for the majority of my career was in IT, working mostly for banks, so that didn't give me much grounding for the unlikely venture of planting and managing a vineyard. Neither did my upbringing in industrial south Lancashire, not much vine growing in the North West of England in the nineteen sixties and seventies - though plenty of factories that would have made a good job of fabricating the machinery needed in the modern day wine making process. I suppose lots of time wasted on sports and drinking didn't contribute to the required skill set either, unfortunately. In fact, it's difficult to find anything relevant to a viticulture adventure in my previous experience. Indeed, if I had decided to advertise for a manager to take on the project of setting up my vineyard and then applied for the job myself, I wouldn't have even given me an interview after looking through my CV. I might have paused briefly when I read about the mid-life geography degree and subsequent employment in Nepal. But the mishmash of jobs after that would have settled it - definitely not a person with a back story suited to the task in hand.