A collection of locals gathered in the Globe, Military Road on Monday January 9, for a talk from Chapel Down Wines. It was a fascinating evening listening to Freddy O’Sullivan, the sales manager, explaining how they produce the wine and it’s intricacies together with, of course, eventually tasting the various varieties of white, sparkling and rose. There was lots of laughter from the audience as Freddy told some jokes from the global wine trade. Chapel Down has also started producing beer which those who drank it, said tasted good.
So that we didn’t get drunk, John, the owner of the Globe, generously supplied lovely food (pizza, prawns and salmon) for us all, which was polished off in no time.
Freddy gave a short history of Chapel Down: “Wines were first planted in Tenterden in the late 1970’s on the 20-odd acre site where our state of the art winery still stands. Fast forward to now and we are sourcing fruit from 16 different sites across the South East. All the hand-harvested grapes are brought to the winery at Tenterden to be pressed (or crushed), fermented and blended and turned into our 15-17 wines (depending on the vintage). Our traditional method sparkling wines are also bottled here (tirage) ready to re-ferment and age at storage facilities in Kent. Recently we moved our warehousing and logistics to Ashford along with our riddling and disgorging facilities, this is to accommodate the growth and success that continues to push us forward.”
More information about wine production is on Chapel Down’s website or email: freddie@chapeldown.com or t@curiousdrinks.com. Details of other talks at the Globe can be found on their website.
Photos: Chapel Down
Image Credits: Oast House Archive .