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Here at Lyme Bay Winery we are proud to be a leading producer of English wine, and work hard to maintain our reputation for making award-winning wines which have gained national and international recognition for their exceptional quality.
Someone else with their feet firmly rooted in Devon who has achieved global success is internationally renowned chef, Michael Caines MBE, and we are delighted to share the news that we will be creating the first sparkling wine to come from his Lympstone Manor vineyard.
Michael opened Lympstone Manor hotel in 2017, after three years of hard work to transform the historic Grade II Georgian mansion into his vision of contemporary country house hospitality for the 21st century. The following year he planted 17,500 vines overlooking Devon’s beautiful Exe estuary, in order to realise his dream of producing the finest English sparkling wine .
“The vine likes to see the water”, says Michael, explaining his decision to plant a 10.8-acre vineyard at the Manor. “Most of the great vineyards of Europe are all located near rivers: the Médoc châteaux of Bordeaux on the Gironde, wine estates along the Rhône, Loire, and Rhine rivers, the great port vineyards of the Douro. So why not the Exe estuary? Our climate is mild and the success of other local vineyards has convinced me that it will be possible to produce outstanding wines here.”
The first harvest will take place this autumn, and Michael has asked us at Lyme Bay Winery to use these grapes to make what will be called the Lympstone Manor Cuvée.
“We already serve some of Lyme Bay Winery’s still and sparkling wines in the restaurant at Lympstone Manor and I have always been impressed by the high quality”, says Michael. “Their standards and ethos match my own and I am really excited to be working with the team, plus the proximity of our locations also means that we can get our grapes to Lyme Bay Winery and pressed within 40 minutes.”
As with his meticulous transformation of Lympstone Manor, Michael will be working closely with our winemakers on everything from tasting tank samples to deciding on blends, fermentation and ageing. And since we share his passion for English wine and for the beautiful county of Devon, which will both be poured into this Cuvée, we’ll be documenting this process here on our blog over the coming months, so stay tuned for a real behind-the-scenes insight into this exciting new wine-making project.
