Ten years ago, my family and I embarked upon our unlikely adventure when we planted the tiny canes of choice grape varieties Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Bacchus – into the clay soil on slopes along the River Brue in Somerset, England. My husband Iwan and our four children were initially a bit sceptical about a vineyard in this particular part of the British countryside. But being as passionate about great food and beautiful wines as I am and recognising precedent (my brother Urs Hauser has been a successful winemaker for 50 years in the Tessier, the South of Switzerland, and my stepfather André Remund is a bone fide connoisseur), they jumped into the effort with me.

Each season since the first planting, we’ve marvelled together at the survival of those original small wines as we weathered seasons after and unexpected obstacles, and small but exciting triumphs. With patience and a lot of hard work, we continued nourishing our dreams and in 2020 we harvested enough grapes to yield our very first quality sparkling wine. Success at last!

Today our eldest son Elias Wirth leads our vineyard project supported by his tenacity and talent for tending the vines and his limitless curiosity about best practice, we are now proudly producing ‘Maid of Bruton’ sparkling and still wines and we do so while prioritising regenerative  on our land, improving the clay and limestone soil and planting hundreds of trees around the vineyard that contribute not only the landscape but its sustainable future for generations to come.

Manuela Wirth