Ancre Hill Estates – Looking to the Moon for the Perfect Welsh Wine

There are countless different things we’re meant to do to get the most out of a bottle of wine, from letting it breathe to swishing it around your glass to release the flavours. For Richard Morris and his family, he took the desire to get the perfect glass of wine to a different level and is planting its crops to follow a lunar cycle. 

Ancre Hill Estates is the brainchild of Richard Morris, his wife Joy and their four children. His efforts in biodynamics are putting his Welsh winery Ancre Hill Estates on the international map. Read on to find out more!

Biodynamics at Ancre Hill

The family started planting in 2006 in the beautiful Welsh county of Monmouthshire and to date, they are the only winery in Wales that adopt biodynamics. A holistic practice, free from chemical additions that work to align winemaking activities with the movements of the moon and the planets, biodynamics was first created by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. Composing such a harmonious balance requires time, hard work and incredible attention to detail. Coupled with Britain’s unpredictable weather, this makes it even more challenging for viticulture free of any chemical help. 

Winemaker David Morris (Richard’s son) puts their success down to the ‘unique meso-climate’ of the Wye Valley and the vineyard’s conversion to biodynamic principles. “The concept of biodynamic agriculture means we don’t use any chemicals whatsoever in our process. It means we keep the whole ecology of the area in balance,” he said. The method adheres to the belief that the moon’s gravitational pull can cause the seeds to swell and burst at certain times. This factor, coupled with the increasing moonlight, creates balanced root and leaf growth.

“We don’t follow the lunar cycle to the letter, it’s much more instinctive than that.” said David. “For example, if we do the winter pruning in a descending moon on a fruit day, then it’s going to put lots of visceral forces into the vine and they are going to come back much stronger.”

The winery’s 12-hectare vineyards are south-facing on well-draining limestone soils. This, combined with long hours of sunshine and comparatively low rainfall, combine to make it an ideal location for vines.

The history of Welsh wine is, as you may imagine, brief, with a cyclical timeline of vineyards introduced only to be uprooted under the varying influences of the Roman Empire, Henry VIII, European nobility and the World Wars. The Welsh vineyard scene as we know it today didn’t start until the 1960s, making Wales a particularly new New World region, relatively free from regulations, giving its winemakers freedom to experiment as they please. 

Richard initially started this project as a hobby. Conversations with neighbouring vineyard and the help of his wife Joy and their children saw Richard planting five hundred Triomphe vines on the grounds of his home in 2006. Those five hundred vines have now multiplied to some thirty thousand, the original Triomphe is now neighboured with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Albariño and a little Pinot Meunier.

To Richard, the environment is of the utmost importance. Almost every process in the winery is conducted with the environment in mind. Natural materials were used over synthetic ones wherever possible with the winery’s walls being constructed from straw bales and a living, green roof, which provides temperature and humidity regulation. Wastewater is treated by a series of ecological pools and plantings which also provide many of the plants and wildflowers used in their biodynamic tea treatments for the vineyard.

The winery has seven concrete tanks, a quartet of concrete eggs and a Stockinger Foudre, as well as an array of barrels and stainless steel tanks. Fermentation is all native yeast and bacteria, with an organic EC1118 yeast used for the second fermentation for the fizz. 

The style of their wines continues to evolve, with small-batch fermentation occurring almost entirely in oak barrels and concrete eggs. Not surprisingly, Ancre Hill Estate’s wines are fully Demeter certified. 

Check out the range of Ancre Hill Estates wines that we stock from the link below!