MEET THE INDIE PANELISTS Simon Hawkins, Hawkins Bros Fine English Wines, Godalming, Surrey Simon runs the business with brother James, selling English wines from a wide range of counties including some bottled under the Hawkins Bros label.
Dan Abbots, CA Rookes, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
This wine business has been a fixture in the Warwickshire town since 1939, with Dan Abbots buying it from John Freeland in 2021.
Jeff Folkins, Dalling & Co, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire
This bustling business, which is half delicatessen and half wine shop, was established in 2009. Jeff buys wines from far and wide including some direct imports from Austria.
Oliver Gauntlett, Eynsham Cellars, Oxfordshire
Oli and business partner Iain Boyce started out in 2010, rebranding and reimagining a former Wine Rack shop to make it more of a destination for wine lovers.
Stefan Botfield, The Wine Cellar, Bedfordshire Stefan’s original shop in Woburn was quickly followed by a second, in Olney. Before establishing the business in 2016 he was head of purchasing at Amathus Drinks.
Simon Thomson, Talking Wines, Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Now approaching its 20th anniversary, Talking Wines is principally a wholesale business but also operates a large shop within its premises, with online sales continuing to grow.
Jeremy Hill, Vinotopia, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire
In his own words, Jeremy has been “marinating” in the wine trade since 1977. He attributes the success of his Cotswolds business to “being everything that a supermarket is not”.
Looking for a
The Hundred Hills estate and winery in Oxfordshire, the sett In doing so it brings something different to the English wine
“N
one of this happened by accident,” says Stephen Duckett, surveying the view of the vines that cling to the slopes of his Stonor Valley estate in Oxfordshire. The vineyard slots so perfectly into the quintessentially English landscape that it looks like it’s always been there. But this project is just a decade old, and it’s the result of meticulous planning and a scientific attention to detail. A bottle of 1992 Nyetimber gave Stephen and Fiona Duckett their initial taste for English wine, providing the spark for a lifestyle change that eventually took Stephen away from a successful career in tech, and gave Fiona a new challenge following the completion of a PhD in applied linguistics. Their search for the right piece of land took four years and covered much of southern England. “We were really looking in chalk valleys,” Stephen says. “We looked at 300 sites. We realised quite early on that if the land already had crops on it, it was too fertile, and if it had horses on it, it wasn’t steep enough.” The gradients at Hundred Hills are certainly unusual in UK viticulture. Part of the estate is thought to be the steepest vineyard in England: to emphasise the point, people have been known to ski down its access track in winter. But cold temperatures are not a problem for the vines, and frost is unheard of in the growing season. “This valley is 2˚C warmer on
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