Room With A View

Denbies has been at the forefront of England’s wine production for over 30 years and, with the opening of a new vineyard hotel on the estate this summer, shows no signs of slowing down. Rebecca Younger spent a night among the vines.

The Surrey Hills may well have only just recently been designated a new wine region but Denbies vineyard, in Dorking, has been leading the way in England’s wine production for more than three decades.

Thirty-three years since the first vines were planted in 1986, the 627-acre estate – still England’s largest single-site vineyard with 265 acres of vines – has opened the country’s first vineyard hotel.

Locals may well be aware that a small, seven-bedroom B&B had operated on the estate for a number of years but the new carbon neutral hotel has added another 10 bedrooms into the mix, along with a new orangery restaurant, bar and two outdoor cabanas with uninterrupted views across the vines.

“It’s been a much bigger project than we originally thought,” managing director Chris White tells us as we relax in one of the cabanas and tuck into a smorgasbord of local meats and a glass of Denbies Cubitt Blanc de Noirs 2013, which has just picked up gold at the 2019 WineGB Awards.

“The vision was born about three years ago but it feels like it’s been a long time coming,” Chris adds. “One of the biggest things is that we’re carbon neutral – the whole place is run from Tessler batteries and solar power and we’ve got electric car points going in soon too.”