4th March 2024 – Crossgates Vineyard – Blue Moon Wine – Mike Phillips
Geraint welcomed a group of over 60 members, a number of whom had not been before, to this talk and explained that we were beginning a new phase in our History of Penybont and District. Up to now most of our sessions had covered history of the past going back to the beginning of time but today and next month we will look at the history of the present day.
He then asked Elizabeth, who is Secretary to the Radnorshire Society, to tell us about some up-and-coming events.
- On 20th July there will be the first ‘Radnorshire Day’ when the organisations within Radnorshire with an interest in the History of the old County will be asked to come and represent the activity that they have undertaken. There will be a keynote Speaker, Margaret Haycock.
- In September there will be the joint meeting with Penybont and the Radnorshire Society. The main speaker for this event will be Dr.Toby Driver whose book, Hill Forts of Iron Age Wales has caused quite a stir.
- Transactions should be posted out in the next few days as Elizabeth has them ready at home.
Geraint then introduced the two speakers, Mike Phillips and Andrew Griffiths, Mike speaking this morning and Andrew speaking next month. Both are young men from the locality who are showing entrepreneurial flair and who are making a real difference, surprising us all, and deserving of a gold medal.
Main Topic: Crossgates Vineyard – Blue Moon Wine – Mike Phillips
Mike started with a picture of the family farmhouse at Guidfa before he set about restoring it. The house was originally built in 1696 and had got into quite a state over the years. Guidfa is a name that has a few different forms at different times: Guidfa (Radnor) is Geidvah 1788, Guidvah 1790, Gidvach 1799 and Coedfa as suggested in our previous History Group Notes, July 2017. The meaning being ‘A place in the woods’.
In this picture Mike drew our attention to a stone barn behind a tree in the left of the photo. Here he found several stones built into the wall with a different colour to the rest of the stone work. He has wondered if these stones may have come from Cwmhir Abbey.
Behind the house there are distinctive mounds with hedgerows. Mike thinks that these may signify an older history of small enclosures with older farm buildings on the hill behind.
Looking back into his own family history his Great Grandparents, John and Emily Phillips moved to Guidfa in 1898 from Cadogan Hall.
They swapped houses with another family, Hughes. He believes that his Gt. Grandparents had been living in the Coach house at Cadogan Hall. John and Emily had 10 children including his Grandfather Eric who was born in 1913. The farm run by Eric was much larger than it is today and was about 150 acres with additional land on two Commons: one in Crossgates itself where he remembers walking to on Sundays, and the other on the way to Llandrindod, opposite Springfield. These Commons disappeared under Enclosure legislation. Mike’s Great Uncle Cecil had the farm then and Mike showed a picture of his Great Grandparents outside the front door of the house in the 1920’s/30’s.
During the 2nd World War, the Farm was used for Home Guard training and Mike often still finds bullets and casings when he is digging. There are also a number of empty Ammunition Boxes in the sheds.
It then became a hostel for the Women’s Land Army and then it had Prisoners of War. Mike then showed a picture of an intriguing lamp made by one of the prisoners from a Lyle’s tin of Golden Syrup (1940).
Prisoners, probably Italians, converted brass door knobs into cigarette lighters.
For the war effort the farm produced potatoes and rabbits. Some of the nets used to catch the rabbits as the ferrets chased them out of their holes are still in some of the shads.
After the war the farm continued with Great Uncle Cecil until he died in 1967. By this time the house was in a terrible state and no one lived in after that.
One of Mike’s earliest and enduring memories was the arrival Neil Richards on his David Brown tractor which also called into mind the Allis-Chalmers Model B Tractor. Mike was sure Neil would remember its number – DC 644.
The Alice Chalmers came from the USA as part of their attempt to support the war effort while remaining neutral. Tractors were take up to the border with Canada and literally pushed across the Border by hand. In this way they technically were not sent to help in the war and the USA preserved their neutral status. The Alice Chalmers is still in a barn and Mike hopes to get it going and to take it on the Tractor Run later in the year. He hopes it will look something like this:
Mike left school in 1982 with only one ambition, to become involved in the Guidfa Farm. As tenant farmers this proved to be more vulnerable than Mike had thought. When his grandfather died the Estate who owned the farm wanted to sell it. Mike was however given first refusal to buy the 63 acres that was the extent of the farm at this time. He was given first refusal and he obtained a 14% mortgage, very high, but this did secure it and the challenge has been to get enough return from the farm to manage the mortgage. He recognised he would need to diversify and take other work to be able to manage. He and his partner Sue lived in Rhayader and Mike worked on a Dairy Farm but they really wanted to live on Guidfa Farm but the house had gone into a really poor state of repair. The landlords from the Estate had not visited or invested in the farm. Mike found that behind some corrugated iron there was an oak frame with some wattle and daub but mostly just mud and manure.
What Mike and Sue wanted was to be able to move to Guidfa, to restore the old house and to live there. Their plans were initially knocked back as Powys Planning refused permission to rebuild. With tenacious support from Fred Barker, County Councillor for the Penybont area, they got permission 2 years later. The ambition was to rebuilt the house on exactly the same footprint as the old house and to use as much of the materials that were part of that building. Stone and flagstones were relatively easy but a lot of the timber was completely rotten.
One of the challenges they faced were the extremely low ceilings in the old building so they had to make modifications within the structure of the buildings to get more ceiling height.
One of the interesting things they discovered on moving some boards was a ‘secret room’ and Mike has wondered if it was a ‘Priest Hole’.
Essentially the whole of the old house had to be demolished as there were no foundations.
The old stairs were used as a model for the new ones:
A picture of the new house drew oohs and aahs from the members.
The building was built on exactly the same footprint as the old house and the old date stone has been incorporated into the new building. Mike and Sue have now been living in the house for 15 years and they have been very happy.
Happy as they were in Crossgates, one year they went on holiday to Biarritz.
On taking a drive into the hills they came across a Vineyard on a hill that reminded them of home. The thought that took hold of them at that moment and that would lead to much research and a new enterprise was; could we grow a vineyard at Guidfa.
What could have been considered a bit of a joke took them to visit vineyards in Cornwall, Wolverhampton and Montgomery. Five years later they got Professional advice from Simon Day who has a vineyard in Gloucestershire. He gave good advice though he did feel it could be marginal whether it would work or not. The good things were the south-west facing slope and the bracken which suggested that there would be a good depth of soil. Mike and Sue decided to ‘give it a go’.
The next thing to decide was the variety of grape. They needed varieties that would ripen early:
The white grape they chose was Solaris; and the red grape was Cabernet Cortis which were also both disease resistant. They decided to plant 1200 vines in 2012.
But, how to plant them was the next challenge. In April, they tried using a plough, that didn’t work, then a rotavator, but that was no good either. What did work was an auger on a digger. With this they were able to make 12” holes very easily.
They used a lime marker to map out the site and then the digger and auger did their work. They were able to plant 25 vines in an hour. All were planted by Mid-May.
By late June the vines had sprung into life with young buds and leaves.
Mike and Sue went off to London for a week-end and when they returned the slugs had had over 200. No one had mentioned slugs as a problem. All was not lost and the next year they added another 600 vines. They now have 3500.
Then there is the waiting game. It takes 4 years for the vines to produce a crop and 6-7 years to get a decent crop.
To support the vines Mike and Sue have had to instal 25 miles of wire. There are 7 wires to each row and the vines have to be trained to each wire.
The flowers come in late May and a late frost is a significant problem. In 2020 there was such a frost and this decimated the crop. By 2021 the vines had recovered. but not fully.
Earlier snow and frosts before the flowers come does not present a problem and the vines are not affected by drought conditions. It is in fact better not to water them in drought periods. It is in fact good for them to have free drainage under their roots.
Cattle can be used to manage grow on the edge of the vineyard while sheep can graze between the rows.
The white grapes come first in September with the red in early October. It is important to remove leaves around the grapes so that there is a free flow of air.
They should not be harvested when wet. Knowing when the fruit is ready to pick can be done with a refractometer but the easier method is to see when the wasps suddenly turn up to steal the juice.
Almost ready:
Ready:
The grapes are all picked in a day ready to be taken to the juicer and this is carried out immediately they arrive.
There is no juicer in Wales so Mike drives them to Ledbury where Haygrove have modern machinery and are ready and waiting.
The juice is matured for a year at Haygrove but the process of getting it ready for bottling is a joint process as the final product is down to Mike.
They make a White wine, a Red wine and a Rose. Red wines are typically more full-bodied with bold flavours, while whites tend to be light and crisp. Mike judges the flavour of each wine based upon what ‘he likes’. The flavour can be adjusted by adding concentrated grape juice to the tank. Mike is proud that it is ‘our wine’ meeting ‘our requirements’.
The white grape is an immediate product whereas the red wine has the skins kept in for a week to give flavour to the wine.
Having got the wine sorted, it needed to become a brand. As with most good ideas, it was one night at the pub that gave rise to Blue Moon Radnorshire – rare and special from a magical County.
Having got a brand they needed a designer to design a label. PixelHaze in Builth proved to be the perfect partner, but it was finding a printer who could do the job for relatively low numbers at a reasonable cost. Mike tried many companies which did not quite match what he wanted but he then happened upon Aftershock Prints in Llandrindod Wells. When Mike first got in touch and was explaining who he was and what he wanted. The lady on the phone suddenly said: “I know you! I have served you at the garage, I am the woman with the purple hair”. And yes, she was, and Mike is now getting all his printing done there and he is extremely pleased.
The business has been developing well and for the last 2 years they have been chosen by 10 Downing Street to send 40 bottles of wine for St. David’s Day. Unfortunately, they are not allowed to have any pictures of wine being served at 10 Downing Street!
Wine can now be bought direct from the farm and they are planning in the future to have a shop. They are selling to hotels and holiday companies and they have developed Gift Packs. They hope to hold Vineyard Tours this summer.
Last year they had 1800 bottles.
Questions:
- Geraint immediately thanks Mike for a wonderful talk and gave rise to the fist question: He obviously had insider information as he asked about the high-tech system for putting the labels on the bottles. The high-tech was a wooden block with a strategically bored hole in it which did the job perfectly. Definitely a Trade Secret!
- Jill asked about severe frosts. Mike said that frost was only a problem when the flowers were out. More recently he has invested in ‘Frost Candles’. These are a small paint tin with a waxed wick. He lights them at about 3.00 a.m. and they work until just after day-break. It does not require much heat to overcome the frost. The other good thing about them is that they are environmentally friendly and he can now get refills for each tin. Crossgates will look a little bit like:
One of the bonuses of this system is that it deters badgers who can get a taste for the red grapes.
- There was then a discussion about Climate Change and whether this is making grapes more viable in our climate. Mike was not entirely sure how much impact this is having. He was aware, as discussed in previous History Group meetings, that there were warmer periods in Welsh history and that there is some evidence that suggests that the Romans were growing grapes at Cefn Llys.
- Mike emphasized the drought tolerant nature of Grape vines. He would advocate never watering them. Watering has an adverse impact on the flavour of the grapes.
- Vines have a life-time of 40 to 50 years and even longer.
- The Rose wines are a simple blend of red and white to suit the taste you are looking for.
- Wines generally come out at about 11% alcohol but legally they can manipulate up to another 2%.
- Asked about expansion, Mike said that the limitation was the amount of SW facing banks.
- The vines need to be picked within 24 hours. He has 3½ acres with about 1000 vines to the acre.
- Grapes for wine production are not as sweet as eating grapes.
Shirley gave the thank-you on behalf of the group. Shirley did not teach Mike but she said how great it was to see young people, who have come through the local education system, doing so well, taking risks, being brave and getting the rewards for hard work.
The members present were invited to taste the different wines. A queue was formed almost immediately.
Our next meeting will feature: Andrew Griffiths who will talk to us about Llandegley Spring Rock Fishery on 8th April.
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