A Year in the Life of an English Vineyard

A little bit about me

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Let's get acquainted

As a little bit of background about me, I founded Drinks Network in 2005 after travelling around the wineries, distilleries and micro breweries of Argentina and Chile with an awesome guy who is now my husband. It was in direct response to a clear gap in the market for ‘big brand’ expertise at cottage industry prices via a network of freelance professionals.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with over 20 of the finest boutique wineries across the globe, together with big brands such as Hardy’s, Stowells of Chelsea, Felix Solis, Calem of Oporto and Turner Road (for which I worked closely with the design team in terms of the brand development, including sourcing multiple images of humming birds until we focused the iconic one you still see today on bottle).

After a few years dedicated to raising a family, I became involved in doing the branding, packaging, marketing, sales and multimedia communications for two (now, multi-million pound) start-ups: www.chafor.co.uk and www.hathersagebusiness.co.uk

More recently, I’ve added a sub-brand to the Drinks Network portfolio: @FlyingSommelière (specialising in #EnglishSparklingWineand Champagne 🥂 🍾) and I’m working closely with a number of incredibly talented wine trade professionals including The Grape Wizard, Drink North UK, The Gushing Lush and Rob The Foodie Goldsmith on all sorts of exciting new initiatives to ‘take the stuffiness out of the wine’ and inject a sense of fun and exploration to every wine occasion.

Focusing on wine writing and oenotourism, I’ll be running a variety of online masterclasses over the coming months and I’m also due to start recording (any day now) for my new radio show on the pioneering community radio station www.ThisIsAlfred.com. Fellow senior food & wine judge, Maria Day and I will be recording a number of episodes together where we taste, review and recommend a range of wines, beers, spirits and non-alcoholic beverages with a focus on What’s On in the local area in terms of wine tourism and events, together with food and wine pairing suggestions for mealtimes and special occasions.

As I’m a working mum, the ‘flying’ part of the brand is due to a genuine lack of time and resource. With an 18 year background in virtually all aspects of wine from #grapetoglass (including having worked on blending trials with some of the finest names in English Sparkling Wine: Emma Rice, Jacob Leadley and Ulrich Hoffmann) I'm currently enjoying learning the fundamentals of pruning and canopy management live in the field.

I also host a delightful team of twelve dancing mums (now avid viticulturalists) at various points throughout the year for pruning, leaf-stripping and grape-picking at harvest time and take great pleasure in writing about our adventures in wine, such as this feature published in Country Child magazine: https://www.countrychild.co.uk/blog/2019/11/11/english-sparkling-wine-harvest-with-the-munchkins.

As a visitor here, you are now part of this community of English Sparkling Wine fans and I will do my very best to recount all aspects of the English Vineyard Year at Breezy Ridge Vineyard, just outside Shaftesbury in the heart of Dorset.

Thank you so much for being part of this community. There are plenty of ways that you can become more involved by following @BreezyRidgeVineyard across social media channels. You can also order mouth-watering 'On The Doorstep' tasting boxes from the Cellar Door online shop: https://breezyridgevineyard.com/shop and keep updated on future tours and tasting dates by emailing: [email protected]. The owners Becky and Joe Fear will look forward to welcoming you ...