Vineyards and wineries in Gwynedd

Early-ripening vines between Snowdonia and the sea.

In January 2023 Gwinllan Conwy took delivery of wool from more than 3,000 Welsh sheep, to be laid round its vines on the slopes above the A55 between Colwyn Bay and Llandudno Junction. The fleece was meant to keep down weeds without glyphosate. The trial that preceded it showed something else: being white, the fleece reflected sun onto the fruit and raised its sugar, which Colin Bennett, one of its owners, compared to a skier’s suntan.

Bennett credits the vineyard’s early bud burst and its winters with little frost to the Foehn effect, the dry, warm wind that comes down off the Snowdonia range. Vineyard Magazine called Gwinllan Conwy Wales’s most northern mainland vineyard in 2018.

Several growers here chose their grapes for the climate. Gwinllan Conwy planted early-ripening varieties from the start. On Anglesey, Red Wharf Bay replanted in 2016 with Solaris and Rondo, varieties adapted to cooler regions, and at Pant Du, on the slopes of Dyffryn Nantlle, the six varieties were chosen for the soil and climate of North Wales.

The vineyards sit in the north-west, near the coast: Gwinllan Conwy near Llandudno Junction, Red Wharf Bay overlooking the bay it is named after, Pant Du in the Nantlle valley and Gwinllan Plas Dinas near Caernarfon, planted in 2023 by the Gunroom Restaurant at Plas Dinas Country House, which smokes its butter with cuttings from its own vines and Gwinllan Conwy’s.