TO CELEBRATE English Wine Week, Quoins Organic Vineyard at Little Ashley near Bradford on Avon opened its doors to the public to give them the chance to sample the award winning wines and to see the hard work put into every bottle.

Alan Chubb first set up the vineyard in 2002 having previous worked with citrus crops abroad.

“I then decided to come back to the UK and it was from looking after a friend’s vineyard for a few days that made me want set up my own two weeks later,” Mr Chubb added.

Three years on, the vineyard is now home to a hectare of organic vines including over 100 varieties of fruit trees on the land.

Mr Chubb grows three varieties of grape, two white, a rosé and one red, to produce four single variety wines.

“Our best seller is the Orion which has won national prizes for its flavour at the United Kingdom Vineyards Association which eventually led it to be sold in Waitrose,” Mr Chubb said.

Orion, developed in Germany, produces a medium dry white wine pale in colour with tastes of apricots, mango and kiwi on the palate.

Mr Chubb solely manages the vineyard and uses the saignée method to produce both red and rosé wines. This method involves bleeding off a portion of red wine after only a short period of time removing contact of the juice with the grape skins.

Due to the colour of red wine being derived from pigments in the grape skins, the resulting juice is a light or bright pink not red and this process is how many rosé wines are made.

Both the vineyard and the winery are certified organic both to Soil Association and EU standards hence the wines contain very low levels of sulphites and all are suitable for vegans.

Mr Chubb said: “From vineyard to bottle, the process takes about four years and it is a very long process which I do on my own.

“The thing with wine is that it doesn’t go off, it just gets richer.”

The range of wines has received high praise in recent years and Mr Chubb was recently awarded a Decanter World Wine bronze award for the 2013 Orion white wine.

Quoins vineyard is also open to guided tours to give people the chance to sample the wines and learn about how the final product came from a vine to the bottle.

For more information, visit www.quoinsvineyard.co.uk.