Producer profile: Chapel Down

The first vines of Chapel Down were planted in Tenterden Vineyard in Kent in 1977.

At the beginning of the new millennium, the ‘English Wine Group’ was formed from the merger between Lamberhurst, Tenterden and Carr Taylor vineyards, although the estate didn’t turn out to be very successful.

In 2002, former Heineken marketing chief Frazer Thompson was taken on board to revive the winemaking operation. On his first day, a company came to repossess the photocopier due to an unpaid bill, and he had to convince them to let him keep it, recalled Thompson in a previous interview with The Telegraph.

Thompson quickly restructured the offerings of the estate, rebranding it as ‘New Wave Wines’. He grouped the estate’s sparkling wine under the Chapel Down name, while selling the still wines of unfamiliar varieties such as Bacchus, Huxelrebe, Schönburger and Ortega under a new umbrella brand, Curious Grape. 

In the early years, ‘by means of the economy of scale’, the estate was able to keep the price down, to help get its wines into supermarkets and high street shops. 

It was also one of the first English producers to adopt crowdfunding to raise cash and awareness of the estate. 

‘With 2000 shares, you can get a third off the price of our wines and 25% off our beer,’ said Mark Harvey, Managing Director of Chapel Down.

Through ‘several rounds’ of crowdfunding, the business was able to not only plant more vines and make more wines, but also ‘create a large number of mini ambassadors’, who would spread the words about the wines to their family and friends, said Harvey. 

Scaling up 

Among its over 300ha of lands already planted with vines – and much more to come – ‘we believe the best terroir in England for growing grapes for high quality wines is in the North Downs,’ said Harvey, pointing to the estate’s crown jewel – the Kit’s Coty vineyard.

The 38.5ha of south-facing plot sits on the steep, chalky slopes that secure sufficient heat and good drainage for its Chardonnay and Bacchus plantings. 

The vineyard also benefits from the Eurostar passing by a few times per hour, according to Oz Clarke in his book English Wine. The bullet trains rushing through at 200 km/hour north-easterly help to stir up the air, which is essential to preventing vineyard diseases.

Kit’s Coty is perhaps best known for its signature Blanc de Blancs. The premium version of this traditional method fizz, Coeur (‘heart’) de Cuvée, won a Best in Show in the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards with its 2014 vintage, as did the still Kit’s Coty Chardonnay 2016.

Contiguous with this ‘Grand Cru’ site, Chapel Down has now taken on lease of a further 388 157ha of land in Boarley farm in Sandling, Maidstone.

By investing further in the North Downs, ‘we are gearing up to reach 404.7ha of land for Chapel Down,’ said Harvey, who anticipates ‘more high quality wines (produced) in scale’.

These extra vines will enable the producer to make a million bottles of wine each year. To put that into perspective, the entire UK produced a total of 10.5m bottles of wines in 2019, according to a 2020 Wine GB report.

A ‘Curious’ producer

Although the brand name ‘Curious’ has now been given to the producer’s beer and cider range, the curiosity of the drinks producer extended beyond odd grape varieties.

Besides working with the classic Champagne grapes, the producer is also keen on discovering the possible expressions of Bacchus, which is deemed by some as a potential English ‘poster grape’.

See also Where Bacchus wine comes from and how it tastes

Chapel Down’s experiments include an oaked Bacchus from the estate’s stellar Kit’s Coty vineyard, an Orange Bacchus, and most recently a carbonated version of this early-ripening grape, which was launched last year (2019).

‘We think the traditional method may mask the flavours of the variety,’ said Mark Harvey, Managing Director of Chapel Down, stressing that the Sparkling Bacchus, still made in a relatively small amount, is meant to be ‘young and refreshing, not to be taken too seriously’. 

It is the estate’s still, unoaked version of the grape that has been ‘many people’s introduction to the variety’, noted Harvey.

The estate’s exploration in other varieties also generated a Pinot Blanc, in addition to an Albarino, which is only made in the warmer years.

The producer has also branched out to spirits. ‘We take the grape skins of the previous year’s harvest to ferment down to a grappa, then blend it with wheat spirits’ to make Pinot Noir and Bacchus-based Gins and a Chardonnay Vodka, Harvey explained.

Covid and Brexit

‘It’s been a strange year,’ said Harvey, who first arrived at Chapel Down in 2015.

With the global pandemic raging across Europe, like most of its peers, Chapel Down had to close its site to tourists in March. 

Although the impact on trade sales was immediately felt, ‘the growth we’ve seen on wines sold in supermarkets and online has been phenomenal,’ he said.

Its online shop, which was only capable of ‘handling around 100 orders per day’, saw a spike of 600% increase in sales, pushing the producer to involve a third party supplier to scale up its online sales capacity.

Despite prior concerns over a shortage in labour, most of the workers from Eastern European countries such as Romania managed to come for the estate’s 2020 harvest, which saw ‘yields above expectations’. Harvey considers fruit qualities from the North Down sites being ‘even better than 2018’, hitting ‘three bumper vintages in a row’.

Though financial figures won’t be released until early next year, in terms of net position year on year, ‘we are in a healthy and strong place,’ according to the MD.

Speaking of the looming Brexit, ‘you can argue it’s a good thing for English wine producers because the prices of imported wines are likely to increase. But the one concern is to ensure you have enough labour to complete the task in the vineyard,’ he said.

‘It’s a semi skilled job – it’s not impossible for you to get to the numbers (or workers) you need from a local labour force, but I don’t think it will happen overnight.’

A taste of Chapel Down: Notes from the experts