Situated in the picturesque New Forest National Park and a stone’s throw from the Isle of Wight, the B58 Winery is the brainchild of Owner and Vigneron Sandy Booth.
Following decades of successful fruit farming, and more specifically of growing strawberries and asparagus in tunnels at the New Forest Fruit Company, Sandy had a vision to apply the same innovative and sustainable growing techniques he uses for his soft fruit business to grow vines.
So far, nothing out of the ordinary you may be thinking - building a business from the knowledge and skill set acquired from an existing successful business…
So what is it that sets the B58 Winery apart? Why is it so innovative in the wine world? An innovator at heart, Sandy always acts upon his ideas and one of his dreams was to make wines but not sparkling wines - as many would have expected from this region in the UK. Sandy’s vision was one of innovation, boundary pushing and trialling something that hasn’t been achieved before: Making still wines, from grape varieties not usually successfully grown in the UK.
“My long-term goal is to break away from conventional approaches, challenge the status quo, and pursue innovative paths to achieve something truly unique and impactful.’’ Sandy says when talking about his goals.
Guillaume Lagger, a Swiss oenologist who’s deeply passionate about low-intervention wine production and who has been a part of the B58 Winery from the start, says that if you can get the soil, climate and human touch to work together, you can craft wines that are full of complexity and truly exceptional!
The innovative and sustainable approach to vine growing, paired with the traditional and low intervention winemaking skillset - thanks to Guillaume’s expertise - allows the team to retain the soil’s natural resilience while keeping human intervention to a minimum, allowing nature to do what it does best: produce the best vines possible, within the most favourable environment.
The B58 winery is one of very few producers in the UK to successfully grow a number of grape varieties that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a UK vineyard and it plans to trial a number of other varieties in their wines over the years to come, including Bacchus Orange and PiWi Red.
Already, in its first year, the inaugural collection of B58 wines has already received great acclaim from journalists, people in the drinks and hospitality industry, as well as from the International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) and the Independent English Wine Awards (IEWA) with Silver and Bronze medals being awarded to the inaugural B58 Wine collection: Beaulieu Red, Beaulieu Rosé, B58 Red and B58 Gewürztraminer.