How many people dream of leaving town, leaving our jobs, getting away from all of it to do one thing extra rural, extra romantic — one thing like working a winery? In 2022, communication govt Sophie Brendel and her husband Panu Lengthy, an occasion supervisor and drinks advisor, did simply that. They upped sticks from London and moved to a 250-year-old Somerset farmstead, following their pipe dream of creating their very own natural cider and wine. Neither of them had farmed earlier than. For some, the prospect can be terrifying. Brendel, nevertheless, goes with “exhilarating”.
“There are a number of issues we fear about,” admits Lengthy of their burgeoning endeavour, launching this spring as Thornfalcon Vineyard and Press. Ought to a freak frost happen, for instance, the couple are poised to expire at midnight and distribute lit paraffin candles, elevating the temperature between the vines. Extra doubtless is a interval of drought; they’ve on-site climate stations linked to 5 satellites, and irrigation from their on-site bore gap. Or deer cropping the vine shoots and destroying the expansion; alarms are set as much as scare them off with flashing lights — and BBC Radio 4 (deer don’t just like the sound of the human voice).
It’s straightforward to see why the couple have been enamoured with the 40-acre property, although. Within the village of Thornfalcon, between Taunton and Ilminster in south-west Somerset, the situation is magnificent, with views throughout to the Blackdown and Quantock Hills. The farmhouse of blue lias (an area limestone) is flanked by wild-flower meadows, woodlands, a 2-acre swimming lake with swans and otters, and an extra 30 acres of farmable land. There are two mature apple orchards, whereas the side and loamy soil of the fields supplies a fertile mattress for rising grapes. As local weather change begins to make situations in France’s Champagne area unstable, the UK is turning into a beguiling terroir.
“There’s an additional degree of stress in that Thornfalcon can also be our house,” says Brendel, who at 6ft in wellies and a denim costume, is brimful of vitality and plans. “We’re all in.”
Aptly, the couple met by the cider tent at Standon Calling pageant in Hertfordshire. Neither was significantly green-fingered. Lengthy’s job shaking cocktails on the Met Bar (in its just-launched glory days within the late Nineteen Nineties) developed right into a profession working drinks at worldwide occasions, such because the Baftas and Elton John’s White Tie & Tiara Ball. At 6ft 5in, he’s taller nonetheless than Brendel and, in distinction to her electrical energy, has a extra laid-back charisma. Brendel, in the meantime, had gone from head of digital communications on the BBC to director of audiences, industrial and digital on the Victoria and Albert Museum. “We spent our holidays exploring European vineyards and the cider orchards of Normandy,” says Brendel. “We dreamt of organising one thing of our personal.”
When the pandemic hit and the occasion world floor to a halt, Lengthy took the chance to reskill with vine-growing and winemaking programs (he’s at present finding out for his WSET — Wine & Spirit Schooling Belief — diploma). Brendel continued because the nexus of the V&A’s technique because it expanded right into a household of museums. When she contracted lengthy Covid it compelled a pause. She returned to her childhood house in Dorset, near the place Lengthy grew up, and was bedbound for months.
“I discovered being in nature calming, centring,” says Brendel. They began the property hunt. However a yr of wanting in Dorset proved fruitless. Then their previous buddy, the style designer Alice Temperley, invited them to remain in her Somerset house, near the place her father makes the award-winning Burrow Hill Cider. “It was the primary of their Cider Bus Saturdays,” recollects Brendel of the now common occasions. “There have been acrobats within the fields and a band; it was so bohemian and great.” The subsequent week the property at Thornfalcon got here up on the market. They offered their house in Islington, north London, days later.
In Somerset they’ve created a welcoming house that could be a fashionable combine of latest artwork and extra conventional furnishings. All the furnishings — from the blue Chesterfield couch by the hearth in the lounge, to the Nineteenth- century Sussex chairs within the bedrooms — is second-hand. Whereas nonetheless sick in mattress, Brendel made temper boards of how she wished the home to look and scoured on-line auctions.
“Panu all of a sudden began seeing all these containers arrive, three months earlier than we moved,” she says. “I had a multicoloured spreadsheet of each merchandise, the place it was being saved, which room it was going into.” Two weeks after finishing, their new house was furnished and able to host a big household Christmas.
All through the home, cushions and curtains have been all made by Brendel. A lot of the artwork, in the meantime, is from associates. Frames alongside the staircase reveal a birthday card drawn by artist Annie Morris alongside images of their kids, Lara and Sacha; a chunk of gold ceramic that was a present from Edmund de Waal (to rejoice the opening of the Younger V&A in east London), and a letter from Brendel’s father, the pianist Alfred Brendel, given at her twenty first birthday.
The farmhouse kitchen is a heat, vivid house looking on to a small pond; there’s a vast scrubbed wood desk, and a range hung with strings of dried chillies and selfmade lavender wreaths. On the desk there’s sourdough from the Barrington Bakery in Ilminster and blue eggs from their Legbar hens. Together with land, they inherited doves, geese and a roost of ageing chickens. An aged hen broke its leg six weeks after they moved in, says Brendel. “I’ll always remember attempting to memorise the 13 steps on wikiHow of how humanely to kill a hen.”
Their new life has been “a steep studying curve”, says Lengthy. “We’re lucky the previous homeowners grew to become associates and suggested us about managing the land.” Their gardener, artist Helen Knight, nonetheless tends to the vegetable backyard, with its gargantuan radishes, a number of types of lettuce, rocket, peas and asparagus, constructing hazel wands across the foxgloves and peonies that promote cross-pollination. Property supervisor Jeremy Carey has additionally stayed on.
In 2023, the couple planted the primary winery by hand, specializing in varieties historically utilized in Champagne: Chardonnay and Pinot Noir Meunier. Final summer season, they added hardier hybrid winemaking varietals, together with Voltis and Cabernet Noir (which Lengthy might layer into both glowing or nonetheless wine). Their strategy is as natural as doable: no herbicides, whereas native sheep — and their lambs — graze between the vines.
The zero-sprayed, totally natural orchards, planted with primarily Kingston Black in addition to Browns, Stembridge Cluster and Porter’s Perfection, already produce some 10 tonnes of apples a yr, although they intend to plant extra. Utilizing the farm’s 150-year-old apple press, Lengthy hopes to create their first restricted version of keeved cider this summer season. “Keeved is an off-dry cider, which finishes its fermentation in a champagne bottle,” he explains. “It’s not candy, and is of course carbonated like a glowing wine can be.”
All going properly, they’ll be part of a burgeoning second in British cider — the Tremendous Cider Firm distributes labels equivalent to Naughton Cider and Discover & Foster, at as much as £35 a bottle, direct to customers but in addition to Michelin-starred eating places such because the Fats Duck in Bray, Berkshire, and Lyle’s and The Ledbury in London.
“We’re studying find out how to navigate marriage and organising a enterprise, which might’t be one and the identical factor,” says Lengthy, stroking their black Labrador, Captain. “It is advisable to sit down and have conferences. It may well go unsuitable in the event you assume you already know what the opposite individual is considering.”
The place Lengthy’s purview is remodeling crops to one thing you’d wish to drink, Brendel has a wider transient. “If it takes seven years from planting a vine to your first bottle of glowing wine, we have to have a sustainable monetary mannequin which balances working prices,” she says.
Central to that is lodging. She designed a shepherd’s hut, looking throughout the vines: a captivating bed room with Lake August nasturtium wallpaper, a tiny log range in the lounge and a hammered copper bathtub out underneath the celebs. This and the lambing shed, with its wood-fired bathtub for 2, and the two-bedroom coach home can all be booked with entry to the lake and a waterside wood-fired sauna — a vital addition since Lengthy’s mom is Finnish and he takes sauna severely.
Brendel brings to Thornfalcon a observe document with enterprise technique. “It’s my background — what I did on the V&A and on the BBC,” she says. “Now, as a strategic advisor, I’m working with the Royal Shakespeare Firm and Somerset Home.”
Nonetheless, it’s been, at instances, a bumpy trip. When the supply of the shepherd’s hut was delayed, it worn out some eight months of rental earnings — “and for some time it regarded just like the provider would possibly go bankrupt with our cash: that’s the problem of desirous to work with smaller companies”. Then there’s the altering panorama of grants, with many vanishing since Brexit. Some prices, equivalent to thatching the roof, hold rising. Within the second part of Thornfalcon’s growth, they’ll tackle funding to transform a textured stone outbuilding that appears throughout the vines to Thorn Hill into an occasions house: in addition to internet hosting supper golf equipment, plans embrace a wine faculty and company hospitality.
Loads of individuals are able to share the dream, and help it. A great deal of the primary cider harvest was carried out in at some point, when associates and their kids from the village turned out to collect the windfall apples. They’re additionally helped out by volunteers from the World Huge Alternatives on Natural Farms — Wwoofers — who come and work for 5 hours a day in alternate for board and lodging. “It’s a magic place, and we’re excited to share it,” says Brendel, underlining an important ingredient in her marketing strategy. “Lately, if one thing doesn’t carry me pleasure I’m not .”
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