A sheep paddock, a broken wall, and a hydrologist.

11.4 hectares, and most of them are not vines.

• Planted vines4.1 ha
• Drystone wall and scrub3.2 ha
• Hazel and ash woodland2.9 ha
• Quarry floor, barn and yard1.2 ha

The slope runs from 210 metres at the bottom of Coldfoot to 290 metres along the wall at the top of Wallgrow. It faces south-south-west, which in this valley means the sun reaches the vines at about ten past seven in June and leaves them at twenty to eight.

We bought it in 2007 as grazing. The first vines went in during the spring of 2009, after two winters rebuilding 640 metres of drystone wall, and the first wine we bottled was the 2012.

Slate on its edge, over a shelf of limestone.

The slate here was laid down flat and then stood on its edge, so it fractures vertically. That is the whole trick of the site. Rain runs down the cracks instead of over the surface, and the roots follow it — we have found them four metres down in the face of the old quarry.

Under the slate is a shelf of limestone that holds water through a dry summer and sweetens the acidity of everything planted over it. Coldfoot, at the bottom, has a skin of clay washed down on top of it, which is where the iron in that wine comes from.

Five blocks, top to bottom, one grape each.

1. Wallgrow

   Riesling · 0.8 ha · 290 m · planted 2009

   The top of the slope, along the wall. Thirty centimetres of soil and then slate.

   Wallgrow Riesling →

2. The Ladder

   Chenin Blanc · 0.6 ha · 260 m · planted 2011

   Eleven hand-cut terraces at a 28% slope. Nothing mechanical has ever been up it.

   The Ladder Chenin Blanc →

3. Quarry Road

   Gamay · 1.0 ha · 240 m · planted 2009

   The floor of a slate working abandoned in 1931. The warmest ground on the estate.

   Quarry Road Gamay →

4. Beaten Acre

   Cabernet Franc · 0.6 ha · 230 m · planted 2010

   The block we booked a digger to pull out in 2017. It rained; the digger never came.

   Beaten Acre Cabernet Franc →

5. Coldfoot

   Pinot Noir · 1.1 ha · 210 m · planted 2009

   The frost hollow. The best wine on the estate in the years the frost misses it.

   Coldfoot Pinot Noir →

4.1 hectares at about 5,500 vines a hectare. We hold every block to 22 hectolitres a hectare, which in a generous year makes about twelve thousand bottles. Pale Ledge rosé is drawn from the lower rows of Coldfoot and Quarry Road, so it has no block of its own.

Three people all year. Nine more at harvest, borrowed.

• Grower and winemaker · since 2007

  Wren Ashcombe

  Eleven years as a hydrologist, then bought a sheep paddock with a collapsed wall and saw a drain. Makes every wine, and decided in 2025 that the Coldfoot was not going out.

• Vineyard · since 2014

  Tomás Iveson

  Prunes all 22,500 vines alone between January and March and rebuilds four metres of wall every December. Talked the estate out of pulling up Beaten Acre.

• Tasting room and cellar door · since 2019

  Delia Okonjo

  Runs the room, the members and the inbox. Pours the first glass blind and holds the four-word rule on every tasting note the estate publishes.

The pickers are neighbours, members and two retired teachers from Marchgate who have come every October since 2013. They are paid, fed, and sent home with a case.

Five rules the estate does not bend on.

1. 01

   Everything in the bottle grew here

   No bought fruit, no bought wine, not in a frost year and not in a good one. In 2021 that meant 8,600 bottles instead of twelve thousand. We sold out by August and said so.

2. 02

   No irrigation, ever

   Vines that are watered root shallow. Vines that are not go down into the slate after the fractures, and that is where the wine tastes of this place rather than of a hosepipe.

3. 03

   Nothing is released until it is ready

   Whatever the price list says. The 2022 Coldfoot went out fourteen months late, three members cancelled, and it was the right call.

4. 04

   Sulphur once, at bottling

   Under 45 milligrams a litre total, on every wine. Nothing else is added: no yeast, no acid, no enzymes, no oak chips, no fining.

5. 05

   The room is never hired out

   Fourteen seats, four days a week, open to whoever books. No weddings, no corporate days, no exclusive use at any price. We have been asked, and offered a great deal.