Cornwall - On St Martins in the Scilly Isles, a hazard to shipping in the mouth of the English Channel, is what must be the most south-westerly winery in Europe.
It is run by former teachers Graham and Val Thomas, who retired to her native island to settle on the family farm, where her father, Derek Perkins, used to grow flowers.
Because spring comes to the Scillies earlier than anywhere else in Britain, for many years the islands supplied the country with cut flowers, mainly narcissi and daffodils, which would be bundled and shipped to Penzance in Cornwall and then on to London. It was hard, labour-intensive work, and today, with flowers being “forced” in giant polytunnels on the mainland and sold in supermarkets for £1 (about R21) a bunch, the bottom has fallen out of the market.
But Perkins’s farm, with its narrow fields sheltered by tall pittosporum hedges, was still there, and the Thomases wondered whether they could make a go of a vineyard on its south-facing, granite-soiled slopes. In summer the sea bordering the gently curving Par Beach is a Caribbean turquoise, but in winter salt-laden gales howl across the bay and the tiny flower fields behind it. Was a vineyard remotely possible?
It turned out it was. Today, the Thomases run St Martin’s Vineyards and produce a range of four whites, a rosé and a red, all from a little farm of 30 hectares.
Graham Thomas was in his tasting room when we visited. While looking nothing like the gabled buildings and estates of a Western Cape wine farm, there is something strangely familiar in the garden between the winery and the tasting room – plants from home. A silver tree is growing beside the winery, there is a bush of pink geraniums below it, and opposite is a bright daisy bush.
The Scillies are like that – full of South African plants – agapanthus and arum lilies, restios, silver trees, geraniums galore, vygies and even proteas.
While British visitors to the famed Abbey Gardens on the nearby island of Tresco ooh and aah at its exotic plants, it all looks like a touch of home to a South African.
“We had to decide what we’d do in retirement,” he says. “I didn’t want to sit around. Flowers weren’t paying any more, and Derek, my father-in-law, suggested we might like to try vines.”
Experts on the mainland had long said the Scillies were unsuitable for vines. “But then opinion changed. We got advice that it would be a challenge, but could be a success, provided we tried a number of varieties.”
The couple started planting vines in the small flower fields – rarely more than five rows wide – in 1996, and produced their first vintage in 2000. Today, they produce about 3 000 bottles a year.
“The weather – and lack of sunshine compared say to vineyards in South Africa – means our wines tend to be crisp and dry. Our range of six wines may seem a bit pretentious for a small vineyard, but we have the range because of the experimentation.”
Today, the Thomases focus on wine tastings and selling to the local markets.
The winery has been a success, but he says they don’t know how much longer they’ll go on. “It’s very labour intensive, and it’s just Val and me with a bit of casual labour at harvest time.”
So if you fancy living on a small isolated island and growing wines close to one of the prettiest beaches in the world – when the sun is shining – there could be an opening for you. Provided you like your wines crisp and dry, of course.
VIVIEN HORLER, Sunday Tribune