Ian & Amanda, Brook Hill Wine

Our Local Produce Personality for June is Ian & Amanda at Brook Hill Wine!

Brook Hill Wine is an award-winning family-run vineyard located in Brook, in the heart of the New Forest. They make a range of still and sparkling wines from their own hand-picked grapes. 

Read more in this The Forest Foodie Meets Brook Hill Wine interview :

The Forest Foodie Team have been working with Brook Hill Wine for almost a year and have been involved in helping to finalise the blends for the latest vintage (lots of tasting!) and the bottling. Flora met up with Ian & Amanda, over a glass of wine, to give you more insights into this brilliant small New Forest Company:

What are your backgrounds and how did you find yourself making wine?

Although we’ve been based in the New Forest for many years, we have also lived in different parts of the world where we’ve always enjoyed visiting vineyards and trying the various wines that we have found.  After retiring and moving to Bramshaw in 2011 we found ourselves with some land and wondered whether it would be possible to set up a vineyard in this part of the New Forest.  Ian had been a biochemist and also, we both love gardening and working outside (and drinking wine...) so it seemed the ideal project!

Luckily, we knew some people at Vine-Works Ltd, a company which plants vineyards in the UK, and we asked them to come around to carry out soil analysis etc and give us some advice. A year later with their help we had 2500 vines in the ground ready to go!

There were three main aims to the project when we started:

a) can we successfully grow grapes here in Bramshaw
b) can we make wine that people would like to buy, and
c) can we see our wines recognised in UK wine awards and we’re really pleased that we’ve managed to achieve all three!

What grape varieties do you grow?

We grow Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (classic champagne grapes) which take up half the vineyard, and we also grow Bacchus, Ortega and Pinot Gris – white grapes - for still white wine, and Dornfelder (a German red grape) which we normally use for our Brook Hill rose

How many bottles do you produce each year?

We pick 3.5 – 5 tonnes of grapes a year and produce on average around 1800 bottles of still wine and 500 bottles of sparkling. A lot depends on the growing conditions each year – a prolonged late frost like this year, or very damp conditions later in the year can do some damage.  On the other hand, a long hot summer like 2018 is perfect, and we had our first exceptionally good harvest then.  We can manage a vineyard of this size ourselves, with some voluntary help from family and friends – a team effort!

Where can people buy your wine?

We’re pleased to say Brook Hill Wines are now available in a selection of outlets across the New Forest, including The Sett and the Forest Park Hotel, both in Brockenhurst; Woodgreen Community Store; the Gourmet Grocer in Fordingbridge; Pages in Lyndhurst; Shallowmead Nurseries and the Solent Cellar in Lymington – and of course Brook Hill wines are also to be found in hampers from The Forest Foodie….

What makes you unique in what you do?

We’re proud of the fact that everything is done here on-site at Brook Hill Vineyard – we grow our own grapes, hand-pick them and process and bottle them ourselves in our own small winery. 

Our carbon footprint is incredibly low and there are no air miles involved in getting our wines to market!

Any exciting plans for 2021/2022?

This year we are experimenting with some new products – including our first red wine, which many people have asked for, and which we hope will be available in the autumn!

What advice would you give someone else looking to follow their dream like you both did?

Don’t do it for the money.   You must have a real interest and passion in what you are trying to do (preferably both of you!).  For us it’s been a lot of hard work, with setbacks and successes but we’ve enjoyed almost every minute of it and we’re still learning!

Flora | Founder of The Forest Foodie, Lymington | April 2021.

The Forest Foodie deliver Hampers & Picnics of Fresh Locally Sourced Produce from around The New Forest to homes, holiday cottages and boats around The New Forest.

www.theforestfoodie.com

Check out this brilliant video below of Brook Hill Wine in action - watch Ian and his son Patrick bottling the 2020 vintage white wine along with Flora from The Forest Foodie and Amanda, who were were in charge of putting the lids on, quality control and moving the bottles into position!