Chris Buckley on Vine Works and Contract growing in the UK

This show was published Friday, February 14, 2025

Overview

Vine Works is a contract vineyard management company based in Sussex near to Ditchling, close to Plumpton College and leading wineries such as Ridgeview, Artelium and Everflyht.

Chris originally did a hospitality business degree but wanting more of an outdoor life, after graduation retrained at Plumpton completing a BSC in viticulture and oenology. While studying, he started working at Vine Works doing ad hoc work in the vineyard. After the course he joined them full time as vineyard supervisor as in now in his current role as business director.

Chris and his partner took a year out in 2014 where he worked in Margaret River and Napa Valley in cellar hand/ harvest roles.

Vine Works offers start to end vineyard support - from pre-planting, suitability reports into pieces of land, all the way through to manual or machine-harvesting the grapes. They can do all operations in-house as well as advise in a consultancy role.

The UK landscape is change. Today, existing producers are getting bigger, buying more land. But they are also buying more fruit on contract from other growers, who are perhaps diversifying their crops. They're seeing producers spreading the contracts across different regions and sites to mitigate against annual variations.

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