Wines from our own 'Loire Valley' have a long vintage

You can’t help but notice the south-facing fields of extensive wired vines, interspersed as they are with lush grasslands sloping down to the reflective, snaking ribbon of the Crouch.

It has been suggested that climate change, particularly our low rainfall and gentle breezes, has a lot to do with this phenomena and that the stretch of our district’s farmlands from Purleigh and Stow Maries to Althorne are “now” ideal for wine production.

Weather certainly has a lot to do with it, but when I say “now”, in fairness to New Hall Vineyard, in the heart of the village of Purleigh, award-winning wines have been produced by them for more than 50 years, since its brave foundation back in 1969 by the Greenwood family.

I have fond memories of a tasting session back in 1991 that included their splendid 1989 Muller-Thurgan and an equally lovely Bacchus of the same vintage.

My Cellar Book also includes records of trying a Huxelrebe (2003) and an Ortega Reserve.

Since that time other vineyards have started up in the same vein. In fact there are at least ten of them in the so-called Crouch Valley region, the largest ones (in addition to New Hall) being Crouch Ridge (originally planted in 2010) and Clayhill (planted earlier still in 2006) – both alongside the B1010, and Martin’s Lane (established as a very effective partnership in 2008) in adjacent Stow Maries.

• New Hall Vineyards wine labels

Who would have thought that in 2021 we would have such a wide ranging selection of excellent local wines right here on our Maldon doorstep?

But as the ill-fated Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, once said: “There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.”

Her country certainly has a long heritage of viticulture – French wine traces its history to the 6th century BC, with many of France's regions dating their wine-making history to Roman times.

But is there any early evidence of it here in Maldon’s Crouch Valley prior, that is, to 1969.

Plenty of Roman amphora shards (and even complete examples) have been discovered in this area, but it is highly likely they contained imported wines, shipped in for the consumption of Roman and Romanised citizens in this distant corner of the Empire.

Travelling forward we turn to a major source for life in late-Saxon and early-Norman England – the mighty Domesday Survey, or Book.

Among the local landholdings there are references to vines with a marked concentration in this part of Essex.

These are likely to have been newly-planted (“noviter plantate”) to cater for the tastes of our new rulers and, lo and behold, we find that one Eudo the Steward’s manor at Mundon included two “arpents” (acres) of vineyard.

Sadly, wine such as Eudo’s proved to be of poor quality and “foreign” imports continued to be the order of the day from the 1150s – mainly from Bordeaux and La Rochelle.

But that didn’t stop the planting of a “new” vineyard at Purleigh in 1120. Its exact location is today the subject of debate, but it is thought to have been on a three-acre, south-facing site somewhere near to the parish church.

It clearly bucked the trend as its wines became so sought after that the Crown took control of it in 1163. There is a persistent story that no less than King John himself enjoyed a glass or two in 1215 to give him a bit of Dutch courage to seal Magna Carta.

Around the same time the Premonstratensian Canons of Beeleigh Abbey had their own vines and produced wine, not just for Communion, but also for their daily consumption.

• Some of the vines at Crouch Ridge

Their wine was, by all accounts, most successful but the abbey, along with its wine, was dissolved in the 16th century.

By that stage there was also a secular 'Great Vineyard' off Maldon High Street and another, smaller one, down by the Hythe.

With the exception of some experimental grape growing in the 18th and 19th Centuries, English wine went into a gradual decline and faded away until the beginning of something of a renaissance in the mid-20th Century.

That “dawn of confidence” included Purleigh’s New Hall and, all these years later, has clearly given impetus to others, making Crouch Valley one of the foremost wine regions in this country.

At the kind invitation of a friend, I recently thoroughly enjoyed a tour, tasting and some excellent cuisine at Crouch Ridge.

Ross and Samantha’s Premier Cuvée, Pinot Noir Red and Rosé and Chardonnay were, in my opinion, spot on and that’s from someone who has been a first growth Bordeaux snob for years.

The Crouch Ridge experience has most certainly set the scene for me to undertake further visits to the other vineyards in the Crouch Valley, but purely for research purposes you will understand!