UK’s first Pinotage Vineyard

Wine lovers… one for you! Half an hour from Brighton, next to the beautiful Leonardslee gardens, I had the great pleasure to be part of UK’s first Pinotage harvest. Thanks to the perseverance of Mannings Heath estate, partly possible because of the climate change, this experimental vineyard planted only two years ago will produce an estimate of 300 bottles of Pinotage in less than a year, the first ever made in UK. I met the man behind the vines to find out more.

William Ranieri reports