Describe your property in 3 words
Tranquil - vineyard - vibes
Tell us your story
We're husband and wife Rob and Louise. We met working for a credit card company – so completely different to what we do now! Part of Rob’s family is Italian with a history of apple and grape farming, and we spent three months working in Italy at vineyards and B&Bs. We had a dream to bring Rob’s heritage back to the UK and start our own vineyard, orchard and glamping site – basically, as a beautiful place for our kids to grow up and for visitors to enjoy with their families and friends while connecting with nature. We are very much a family-run business: our parents help out a lot and we have one employee, our vineyard assistant Matt, who gets stuck into pretty much everything!
Tell us about your wine
We are natural winemakers – this means our wines are fermented using the wild yeasts found naturally on our grapes, we don’t use any additives, and the grapes aren’t fined or filtered. This creates a wine that's truly unique to our vineyard and an expression of our beautiful part of the English countryside. For us, the main aim is to make wine that's delicious, fun – and hopefully a little bit cheeky! We think we achieved that with our first vintage in 2023, when our semi-sparkling Solay was picked by the London Evening Standard as one of the best English wines of the year – not bad for a first effort!
We've also created a stunning rose, which has amazing colour and is a mouthwatering fruit bomb, a wonderfully crisp, easy-to-drink Chardonnay, and a cheeky fizzy red, which is getting a cult following as Nottingham’s very own Lambrusco. We're also keen to experiment, and created a dry hopped red called Hopfusion which appeals to craft beer lovers. As well as wine, we make cider and were over the moon to win a Silver and Bronze award at the British Cider Championships this year.
What's been your greatest success?
We're most proud of how much people seem to enjoy the space we've created, whether they're guests staying overnight in our glamping pods or here to have a tour and tasting in the vineyard. We feel it's really important to ensure people have fun.
What's been your greatest challenge?
Managing the vineyard. A lot of hard work goes into looking after it to ensure we get the best possible fruit. You can’t make good wine from bad fruit, so it's really important we get the viticulture side of things right. It’s been a steep learning curve, but something we've enjoyed – whether it's staying up all night lighting fires to keep late spring frosts at bay, or putting trellis posts in by hand, or days upon days of pruning!
What's your favourite feature of the estate?
The wildlife we're now attracting: there's a wonderful bird population, including buzzards, woodpeckers, swifts, red kites and a family of barn owls. Deer (muntjac and roe) also pass through the wooded areas, along with rabbits and hares who run through the vineyard. There's a wildlife spotter in each pod so our guests can record what they see. Summer grasshoppers are our favourite creatures! We keep the grass long in certain areas so families can go grasshopper hunting – it's wonderful seeing them creep through the grass. Hopefully, it helps them build wonderful memories together.
What's the strangest request you've had from a guest?
Someone asked if they could use their metal detector on the estate. That was fine with us, but unfortunately, they didn’t find anything valuable…or so they said!
What's special about your location/region?
We think Nottinghamshire and the East Midlands are wonderful places to visit, especially for staycationers. We have a fantastic collection of tourist spots within a short drive – Sherwood Forest, Nottingham Castle, Wollaton Hall, Newstead Abbey – along with great activities for the kids (the National Space Centre, Alton Towers, Manor Farm) and beautiful countryside to explore on foot or by bike right from our doorstep, along with some cracking country pubs. But what's really special about our place is just sitting out on the sun deck of your pod, glass of wine in hand, looking out to the vines as the sun goes down – utter bliss.
What local hidden gem should guests check out?
We always like to recommend Sarsfield’s Chocolaterie & Tea Room. It’s the full experience: not only can you purchase freshly made chocolates, but you can see them being made, enjoy their famous real hot chocolate, as well as having chocolate-making lessons. There's a good walk to get there from the estate, too.
What does the future hold for Wolds Wine Estate?
Having planted the vineyard in 2020 and opened the glamping in 2021, we're a young business. But we're continuing to diversify and grow, and are in the process of building a new winery, café/restaurant and event/tasting space. That will allow us to offer more services to our glampers, plus foodie breaks and retreats. We're also expanding our orchards as we continue to fall in love with cider, and hope to make our vineyard bigger. For us, it's important to do it all as a family, creating good memories and sharing the estate with other families along the way.
