Country diary: making wines in Sussex that taste of the place

Dew farm, Peasmarsh, East Sussex: Ben Walgate wants to establish a vineyard that echoes the humus- and microbe-rich soil environment in which wild vines thrive

In a coppiced corner of Dew farm, deep in the rolling Sussex Weald, grows a wild grapevine: ancient, gnarled and bountiful. When Ben Walgate moved here last year, he wild-fermented grapes from the vine and found he had made a wine that, as he put it, "tasted of the place".

Now Walgate, who comes from a long line of farmers, is creating a vineyard - Tillingham Wines - using that vine as inspiration. Instead of the intensive and chemical-dependent practices of traditional viticulture, Walgate, with the collaboration of the owner of the estate, the conservationist Lord Devonport, wants to establish a vineyard that echoes as closely as possible the natural, biodiverse, humus- and microbe-rich soil environment in which wild vines thrive.