The Alexandra Allotment is one of the oldest and largest in the Borough of Epsom and Ewell. There has been a vineyard on the allotment for about 40 years, following the retirement of the principal plot owner, the vineyard was under threat. It was proposed that Alexandra Allotment Group (AAG) would rent the plot from the Council in order to preserve and maintain the vines for the benefit of all plot-holders. In July 2010 forward thinking members of the AAG approached Denbies Wine Estate, England’s largest vineyard in Dorking to see if they would consider sponsorship of the vines. Following a site visit, it was agreed that Denbies would support a three year sponsorship of the Alexandra vineyard. Denbies are also providing ongoing training and advice under the watchful eye of Sue Osgood, Denbies vineyard manager.   On-site training on Vine management, pests and diseases, crop and winemaking and new vines was held with the AAG vineyard managers and with a long term strategy now in place, AAG are looking forward to increase quality and quantity over the next years.

 

AAG harvested the grapes in the vineyard on Friday 1^st October. It turned out to be one of the wettest days we have had for ages, but we were really pleased with the crop, which was much better than we had expected.

We collected ten boxes of really lovely bunches of grapes.

For our first harvest the AAG decided to join the Urban Wine Company (UWC), which acts as a winemaking collective for local growers in London and the South East. The UWC delivers the grapes to the winemaking company and bottled, labelled wine is returned in March next year. This seemed a good option to kick us off this year and allow us to get used to the vines and plan options for winemaking in future, while getting some guaranteed drinkable wine in our very first year.

The UWC confirmed that the AAG vineyard provide 117.5kg of acceptable grapes.

This means we should be picking up about 24 bottles of wine next March. Not bad at all for our first time!