Inside Hawkswood Vineyard and Winery at Thurston where a theatre nurse and a surgeon became award-winning wine makers
Unwinding with a glass of wine was always one of life's pleasures for Michael and Irene Rhodes.
Most people would leave it at that ... happy to pick up a decent bottle and enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labour.
But surgeon Michael began to wonder about the operation that lay behind the array of reds, whites and rosés on the off-licence shelves. It was the start of a passion that within a decade would see the couple, who now have a vineyard in Suffolk, become award-winning wine makers.
“One day, when I was about 50, I said to Irene: ‘I wonder how difficult it is to make wine. I’d quite like to give it a go,’ says Michael.
“I cold-called someone and asked if I could visit his vineyard. We went to help him harvest and he gave us some left over grapes.
“We made our first bottle – what a disaster...”
But the seed had been sown. Undeterred, they tried again. As time went by their pursuit of excellence became more serious.
Eventually they even moved house to make their dream a reality, setting up Hawkswood Vineyard and Winery at Thurston, a few miles outside Bury St Edmunds.
The couple met in 1995 when Irene, a theatre nurse, was assisting Michael with operations.
Manchester-born and growing up in Wales, where his father was a professor of gastroenterology, Michael studied at Cambridge and Oxford. He specialised in laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery and worked all over the country before becoming a consultant in Norwich.
From 2009 to 2011 he was president of the Association of Laparoscopic Surgeons, and is also an honorary reader in surgery at the University of East Anglia.
Irene grew up in Suffolk, went to school in Mildenhall and college in Bury, then trained as a nurse at Newmarket Hospital.
She is now part of the nursing ‘bank’ at the BMI Hospital in Bury, fitting part-time hours around the demands of the wine business.
When their wine making began both were working full time and living in Attleborough in Norfolk.
When the opportunity, came for Michael to retire in 2018 it was the chance to turn a hobby into something more.
“We had 100 vines in our garden in Attleborough and also made wine for a couple of other people,” said Irene. “We had a tiny little area for the winery.
“At first we literally crushed all the grapes by hand and put them into the press.
“It was becoming unmanageable. Delivery lorries couldn’t get into the drive. Our wine tanks were all outside.
“So we thought we would need to move and look for somewhere to plant a lot more vines and be more serious about it.”
That proved easier said than done. “We were on the point of giving up and were going to have an extension put on the winery. We even had the sand delivered ... then we saw this place.”
“This” was Thurston Place, a handsome 19th century house once owned by Nathaniel Hodson, who created Bury’s Abbey Gardens.
It came with land, and outbuildings that could be converted into a winery.
Four years on, thousands of vines are planted in neat rows a stone’s throw from the house, festooned in September with tight-packed bunches of grapes that have ripened fast in the summer heatwave.
Michael and Irene do all the work themselves except when family members are called on to help with the harvest.
The vineyard is named Hawkswood because there are woods close by, and marauding pigeons are kept at bay by Ruby the Harris hawk.
Irene became a falconer after being captivated by the birds at Lavenham Falconry, and Ruby also has back-up from wild buzzards and red kites that nest in nearby trees. Dogs Archie and Nellie complete the family team.
The main vineyard was planted in 2019. They grow Bacchus for white wine, and Pinot Noir and Rondo for red and rosé. Another 300 Solaris vines went in last year.
But ensuring a good crop is never easy. Late frosts can be deadly, killing buds or even the whole vine.
The UK’s usually cool climate means constant battles agains downy and powdery mildew, and botrytis.
Then there is the wildlife that, given half a chance, will damage the vines or scoff the crop before it makes it to the winery.
“One of our first jobs was to surround the land with fencing to keep out rabbits and deer,” said Michael. “If you get a muntjac deer in it would eat a whole plot in a day.”
Wasps are another headache. “Last year was dreadful – we had wasps’ nests everywhere, and once one wasp has found the pinot noir the next day there will be 30. They pierce the skin of the grapes and make them useless.”
Michael and Irene still make wine for other growers, as well as from their own crop.
On a mid-September afternoon Dave has just delivered 700kg of grapes picked that morning at a vineyard in Hertfordshire owned by Dunelm chairman Andy Harrison.
The bunches of Solaris grapes – which taste surprisingly sweet – go straight from the back of the van into the crusher, which also removes the stems.
Timing is everything. The faster they can be processed the better the wine will be.
The squashed grapes are tipped into a presser to extract the juice which is piped into a tank where it will begin its transformation into wine.
Boxes of the couple’s own Bacchus grapes, harvested a few hours earlier, are next in line. The Pinot Noir were due to be picked next with hopes of a tonne from 1,000 vines.
Shouting over the noise of the machines Irene says the 2022 harvest, following the hot dry summer, is a good one. “This year the grapes were ready far earlier than usual.
“We have very young vines so a little more water would have helped. Older vines cope well with drought – their roots will go right down to the water table.”
“We only have a dozen days a year when we’re harvesting,” said Michael. “It’s hectic. We picked 200kg this morning, and finished working when it got dark last night. We hadn’t eaten all day.”
Irene added: “We de-leafed the vines earlier in the year to help ripening, and we have special clippers to cut off the bunches.
“Grapes always come on new cane, so after we harvest we chop off the old one and choose a new one, that’s trained in so the new shoots come from it.”
For the last six years the couple have won awards. They won the prize for the best rosé in East Anglia in 2019.
This year their 2021 Bacchus white wine and Rondo rosé won Wine GB national silver awards.
“Hundreds of wines are entered and you’re putting yours beside the best producers from Kent and East Sussex, which is exciting,” said Michael.
Once they committed to making the finest possible wine they sought the best advice.
“We learned a lot of our wine- making skills in New Zealand and Australia. I spent time with some very eminent wine makers,” he said.
They also learn when things go wrong. “We make a new mistake every year,” he added.
Michael, who also has a degree in pharmacology, is fascinated by the chemistry of wine.
Over several weeks the pressed juice is passed through a series of tanks where it undergoes processes including treatment with enzymes to help remove debris.
Yeast and nutrients are added to ferment it. “Refrigerated cooling jackets are used to control the fermentation otherwise it gets too hot then a lot of the subtle flavours are lost,” said Michael.
“All our wines are dry. You ferment longer for a dry wine. We make bone dry wines along the lines of Sauvignon Blanc.
“If the wine is a little bit bitter you can put in a rectifier which is pure grape sugar.
“When the yeast is finished it dies and drops to the bottom of the tank.”
The wine then goes into another tank to be cold-stabilised which he calls ‘putting it to bed for the winter’.
“This year I think we will produce about 3.000 bottles. In the future we may produce as many as 4,000.
“We make wines we would like to drink. If we make one we don’t like we won’t let it out of the house.”
But if something doesn’t turn out quite right it can often be salvaged. “We’ve had crises before when we’ve withdrawn whole wines and tipped it back into the tank. We had a rosé that went fizzy, we tipped it back and fixed it. Usually you can rescue it at that stage.”
Pinpointing what makes a great wine is tricky. “That is the eternal question for a winemaker and if I knew the answer then I’d probably be famous,” Michael said.
“There are so many factors – vintages vary in even the greatest vineyards because of the weather during the growing season. Then there is care of the vines to get the most ripe fruit with the least disease.
“There is no doubt that techniques in the winery can greatly improve a wine but the continental winemakers always say ‘you can make an okay wine from poor grapes in the winery, but you will never make a great wine from poor grapes’.”
n Visits to the vineyard and winery with wine tasting – they opened a new tasting room this year – are welcome by prior arrangement for small groups up to 14 in number.
For more information go online to hawkswoodvineyards.co.uk
