Burn Valley vineyard in Norfolk

The beautiful Burn valley vineyard was set up in 2015 near the north sea coast in north west Norfolk and Iast December we managed to visit this small family run vineyard along with members of Slow Food. Our visit to the winery and vineyard was to meet Samantha who together with her sister Laura and other members of her family own and run this new English wine venture.

The vineyard which was planted in late 2015 and the new winery which was only built last summer lies in a beautiful valley near the lovely small historic village of North Creake in north Norfolk. But even though this family run business has only been in existence for less than four years it already produces an excellent white wine, a lovely red and also more recently small amounts of rose wine.

The vineyards owners have exciting plans for their new venture, including producing a wonderful white sparkling wine and increasing the total production of all their wines over the next few years. English sparking wines have grown in popularity over the last ten years and are now winning many international awards at competitions against more well known and established French wines.

At the moment there are nine different grape varieties grown at Burn Valley including Pinot Noir, Rondo, Bacchus and early Pinot and these have proved to be perfect for the soil type and micro climate in the valley. Blending the different varieties together to produce and excellent finished wine is always the most important part of wine making and the wines that have been produced so far are all excellent and a sparkling wine is also planned soon.

Olivaverde together with local members of Slow Food plan to organise visits and tours to Burn valley and also other small East Anglian vineyards in 2020, and we plan that the tours will include tutored tastings of these exciting and increasingly popular English wines.

Interest in all the excellent English wines that are grown in East Anglia is increasing rapidly and we also hope to combine tastings of the wines together with tastings and classes on the olive oils produced by Slow Food members in Italy and the Mediterranean region.

Burn Valley wines will be one of the East Anglian wines that will also be served at dinners to be held by both Olivaverde and Slow Food Anglia these are to be held each month in both Norwich, Ely and Cambridge over the coming year.