Vineyards and wineries in South Glamorgan

Wine on the Glamorgan coast in 1875, and again since 1979.

In the spring of 1875, Lord Bute’s head gardener, Andrew Pettigrew, planted vines on the slope beneath Castell Coch, at Tongwynlais outside Cardiff. Gamay Noir did best. A second Bute vineyard followed in 1886 on the Glamorgan coast at Swanbridge, and in 1898 Pearson’s Magazine headed its account of the venture “Our Only Vineyard”. The last vintage came in 1914, when wartime left no sugar to spare for the wine, and the vines were uprooted in 1920.

In 1979 the owners of Glyndwr established a vineyard at Llanblethian, outside Cowbridge. Llanerch, near Hensol, was planted in 1986, and some of those first vines, Triomphe d’Alsace and Reichensteiner, were still cropping in 2021.

The Vale of Glamorgan hugs a 20-mile stretch of the Bristol Channel and is known as the Côtes du Glamorgan for its higher-than-average sunshine and temperatures. Among its newer vineyards, Tair Gafr, at Treguff, is certified organic by the Soil Association, and St Hilary, a hectare planted in 2021 at Glebe Farm outside Cowbridge, is farmed organically; both have their wine made as natural wine by Mountain People Wine, in Tintern.

The vineyards sit in the rural Vale around Cowbridge, with Llanerch to the north, close to the M4 and Cardiff.