Vineyards and wineries in Somerset

Vines around the Levels, where Glastonbury Abbey kept a vineyard.

Somerset’s wine has a charter behind it. In 956 King Eadwig confirmed to St Mary’s, Glastonbury, a vineyard with two hides at Panborough, near Wedmore, and the abbey’s canal to the River Brue later carried grain, wine and fish from its outlying properties.

Several of its vineyards look over the same country. Hugh and Hilary Tripp started Avalon in 1981 on the site of a historic vineyard near Glastonbury, with half an acre of vines, and it has been organic since it began. On the Isle of Wedmore, near Panborough, Mudgley Farm planted an acre in 2014 on ground the estate says was once planted by monks from Glastonbury Abbey. Fenny Castle stands on a hill above the Levels whose marl, divided by a rare layer of the mineral celestine, earned it Site of Special Scientific Interest status, and Wraxall, first planted in 1974 on a south-facing hill just south of the Mendips, looks over the Levels.

North of the Mendips the vineyards sit around Bristol: Aldwick at the foot of the hills, Dunleavy at Wrington in the Yeo Valley, Limeburn Hill above the Chew Valley and Failand Farm just outside the city. Around Bath the ground is limestone: Minerva plants the limestone hills south of the city at Corston, Combe Hay and Tennygrove are also near Bath, and Smith & Evans, near Langport, grows on White Lias Limestone.

Somerset is cider country too, and some estates press both. Avalon has made a farmhouse cider since 1987, Thornfalcon runs a vineyard and a cider press side by side, and Failand Farm makes cider and wine under the name Wild West. At Oatley, near Cannington, the sparkling wine uses Kernling, a pink-skinned grape; at Wayford, ten couples from the village planted 3,500 Pinot Noir vines in a single week in 2007.