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Welsh vineyard receives regenerative certification in UK first
Hebron Vineyard in Carmarthenshire, Wales has become the first vineyard in the UK to receive regenerative certification from A Greener World (AGW).
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Planted in 2010, Hebron Vineyard is the brainchild of Jemma Vickers and Paul Rolt, who previously spent almost a decade in Andalucia, Spain, converting an established vineyard to organic viticulture. The couple used this experience to pioneer regenerative viticulture in West Wales.
Hebron Vineyard’s first release, a red wine called 1, came in 2019. Today, the vineyard is planted with the white variety Solaris and red hybrid Rondo. Notably, the vineyard has the UK’s only commercial arbustrum, an ancient technique where grape vines are ‘married’ to trees, in this case a willow trellis.
Now, the vineyard has become the first in the UK to receive regenerative accreditation from AGW, which identifies, audits, certifies and promotes practical, sustainable farming systems, and was launched in the UK in 2018.
“We understand truly regenerative agriculture is about more than soil carbon,” the criteria for certification on the AGW website explain. “It must mean healthier food, healthier, more biodiverse ecosystems, cleaner air and water, and better treatment for workers and animals.”
Asked about the difficulties of practicing regenerative viticulture in West Wales, Vickers and Rolt told the drinks business: “The biggest challenge has been trusting our intuitions and keeping the faith in our trials and methods. We could find no points of reference back then, within Wales or the UK, that confirmed our feelings about growing in different ways from modern, industrial methods.”
“We had to look at the challenges such as the weather conditions and work with them instead of fighting against them,” they explained. “This meant designing our own vine training system, growing higher to encourage greater air flow and choosing rootstock and vines that stacked the odds in their favour, eliminating any need for spraying.”
“We hope that it [AGW certification] encourages people to think and work differently in a genuine way, not just for a certificate, but to consider what is happening with the soil and eco system that surrounds it long term. Vines are long term crops and we need to care for the soil and the whole environment they are in as much as the vines themselves.”
As for what is next for Hebron Vineyard, the regenerative duo said: “We will continue with the learning curve we are on, being completely terroir driven, striving to produce wines with a genuine taste of place. We will continue to keep thinking like a vine in order to do right by it and the soil and environment it grows in. Our living willow vine support arbustrum is one of the ways our natural intuition, initiating the wisdom of the past, is giving back rewards and is a truly beautiful thing.”
According to Vineyards of Wales‘ latest data, there are 36 commercial vineyards across the country, from down south in Cardiff all the way up north to Anglesey.
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