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From a family-run vineyard near Bury St Edmunds
The Bacchus grape variety delivers wines with a distinctively aromatic, slightly flinty quality that are often a great match for fish dishes. This luscious example from winemaker Guy Howard is made and bottled on the Giffords Hall Estate.
We had very little knowledge of growing vines or making wine and with the bliss of sheer ignorance, we thought that the vineyard business would make a welcome change from the daily grind in the city.Linda Howard
Giffords Hall is located just south of Bury St Edmunds an area mentioned in Tacitus as being very popular in Roman times with Legionaries because of the quality of the wine.
In later centuries a third of the Tithe to Rome was paid in hogsheads of wine from Bury St Edmund.
The Howard family bought Giffords Hall as an already established vineyard 12 years ago.
The family concentrated on producing top quality fruit and became contract growers in order to learn as much as they could.
The ultimate aim, though, was to produce very high quality boutique wines themselves and in 2009, they put their first label onto a bottle.
Howards bought Giffords at just the time when real investment and marketing expertise were starting to enter the English wine industry attracting corresponding media attention.
With the years of hard work, research, study and experimentation, Gifford now offers help and advice to other growers and those entering the English Wine industry.
Between them, the family runs the East Anglian Vineyards Association numbering some 40 vineyards in the region.
Though a commercial producer, Giffords Hall is still very much an artisan family business and has many links with the local village community and the local pub.
Family children and their friends have always had holiday jobs through their school and university – running deliveries and manning a small winery shop and café.
The shop is inhabited by Emily the wine cat, who enjoys visitors and is always happy to help them with their teas and coffees, but isn't quite safe around the milk jugs.
