Growing Vines to Make Wines

Excellent beginners book for growing grape vines. Having read a lot on the subject on the internet, I would say this book lacks a lot of explanation or other options, but for a beginner I guess this is perfect because he narrows down on the best methods that have worked for him in a UK climate. So if you want to start growing vines asap, this is a quick and simple guide.The most important principle of terroir is however little covered in this or any other text I've come across. Presumably there are a lot of texts in French on the subject. Meaning that basically, the soil is everything. Understanding your landscape before you plant will more likely result in success. You can grow grapes in any soil very easily. The question is, whether those grapes are what you want in terms of flavour, acidity, sugar levels etc, and this is largely dependent on the soil. The key principle most authors don't emphasize enough is that their experience is entirely unique to their land. In other words, what works for them, doesn't necessarily work for someone else, and this is why you get so many seemingly conflicting opinions on how to grow grapes. My advice would be to read around the subject, including books like this, so get a taste of the different opinions and methods employed. Speak to local winemakers (i.e. people growing them in similar soils in back gardens and allotments close to your land) for advice. Speak to British vineyards, and importers of grapevines. This will give you an overall picture and several options. Instead of getting confused will all the information, come up with several options of vine training styles, vine spacing, soil amendments, and vine varieties and setup an experiment by planting a few of each. Then over a period of 2-3 years, you will see which ones grow best in your soil. Then remove the less successful ones and replace with those that seem to do well. Growing vines as a hobby is a lot to take on if you want good wine. If you just want any old variable plonk, just stick a cutting in the ground and let it go.

The book is very informative about the whole process of making wine from grapes, however, it is definitely more suited to larger scale production of wine rather than home small wine production. The book contains some very useful information that will help me to understand the process of obtaining good wine, worth buying but I have ordered another book which hopefully will be more suitable for home wine making.

This book is excellent value and a useful mine of information – particularly in comparing current procedures with the Author's first vineyard. It remains my GoTo book.

This book contains enough detailed advice to be useful, but not enough science to be overwhelming to the amateur. I can't recommend it enough! A great starting point for anyone thinking of growing their own vines in England with specific advice on our climate and what is achieveable. I'm a country wine maker and was glad for the detailed advice of how to take this one step further with grapes.

An excellent book for beginner and experienced grower/vintner. Lots of pictures and diagrams. lots of useful information of the whole process from preparing the ground to choosing and planting the vine, to care and harvesting the crop and making the wine. I would recommend this book to all who want to know how to grow your own wine!

Interesting reading

good informative and easy to read book for a novice, will help assist in my 1st grape vine in a garden, as not many books on the subject. would have liked more color photos but otherwise found useful

Really interesting book ,