A Glass Half-Full Story: Jane Awty on Oatley Wines

A Glass Half-Full Story

Jane and Iain Awty met studying Chemistry at Oxford. Tiring of London, they upped sticks in 1985 for a fresh start as wine growers in Somerset, when British wine was still struggling for recognition. Jane Awty (née Wreford, 1964, Chemistry) joins us to tell the story of following her and Iain’s dream to become an award-winning, environmentally responsible family business.

Jane and Iain Awty after receiving two medals for two entries in the 2018 WineGB Awards

Diary entry – 10th June 1986: “Iain and Mike finished the canes and rabbit nets today. The planting has taken two days short of two months, occupying every daylight moment that could be spared from children and work and with lots of help from friends. The vine shoots are 2-3 inches long yet the mayweed that sprang up from the bare earth is up to the children’s waists. We’re exhausted.”

But we were done. Only nine months before, in September 1985, we had loaded the family Volvo to the gunwhales with our three small children, a collie dog, 2 cats, 2 rabbits and a tortoise, heading for the Somerset field where we’d decided to start our vineyard.

At that point, most of what we knew about wine came from drinking it. But as chemists, we did at least know to get the soil analysed before planting. We also had reams of good advice from the government Vine Adviser, who confirmed that Wilhayes Field was ideal: a sloping southeast field of red sandy loam sheltered by hills and a large wood.

Fast forward to 1988 and the vines we planted had matured enough to gather our first small crop. Two years later, we sent the fruits of our labour – a dry white from the same Kernling vines we use today – to the International Wine Awards, where it won a bronze medal.

Since then, our wines have won 35 awards in 26 years at the International Wine Challenge Awards, and 15 awards in 9 years at the Decanter World Wine Awards. But, really, while winning things is lovely, it’s never been about the awards or getting big and making lots of money. The real pleasure of this life has been our ability to keep living it – producing wines that we love while getting to live and raise our family on this amazing piece of land.

At the heart of our philosophy is the idea of balance. In the early days, that mostly meant balancing the books: we decided to keep things simple by producing

Harvesting in the 80s with a vintage Ferguson T20 (now retired)

only two white wines from two grape varieties, the aforementioned Kernling and Madeleine Angevine. We also chose to sell directly, mostly to customers in the southwest, to save on distribution.

As the years have passed, however, the idea of balance has become more about finding a balance with the land itself. We now know, for instance, that our vineyard isn’t just planted in a good location: the rounded edges of Wilhayes Field suggest it was carved out of ancient woodland rather than enclosed, which means our hedgerows are enriched by thousands of years of biodiversity.

We support that ancient biodiversity by letting our alleys come up to seed in May and June, keeping a naturally regenerating wild area nearby and promoting a cover of naturally regenerated sward to maintain soil health and capture carbon. This natural equilibrium benefits our vines because it promotes a larger diversity of insects with a balance between predators and pests that eliminates the need for pesticides.

Of course, being so closely connected to the rhythms of land and season means we also notice when the balance goes awry, as with climate change. You might think that, as winemakers, we’d be glad of the warmer weather. But I’m enough of a scientist to know it’s really disastrous. Our harvests now come on average two weeks earlier than when we started, with three of the last four years setting new records. And that’s not all: we have more trouble with mildew due to bigger rain events and we’re also vulnerable to snap frosts, because our vines break bud earlier. In 2020, for the first time in 30 years, we actually lost a whole block to frost. We’re doing all we can to help fight climate change and restore the balance. As well as conserving biodiversity and capturing carbon, we’re using lower weight bottles to keep our carbon footprint low, buying high quality traditional corks to support the mixed cork oak ecology in Portugal, eliminating plastic from our packaging, keeping our ‘wine miles’ low by selling mostly within the southwest and limiting our environmental impact by using handheld electric tools, recharged from solar panels.

It’s the least we can do before passing the vineyard on to the next generation – specifically, to our son, Ned, who has a family of his own now, as well as his own grand plans for Oatley. That’s the beauty of wine, really: each vintage tells the story of a single year, but also of the place itself – its past and its future. That’s the beauty of wine: each vintage tells the story of a single year, but also of the place itself – its past and its future.

To learn more about Oatley Wines or arrange a visit, go to www.oatleyvineyard.co.uk