The Harvest is coming in.  What a year with sunshine and more sunshine!  The Farmers are happy with crops in abundance.  Bumper crop of seeds and berries.

It’s well worth a visit to The Lost Gardens of Heligan, their wholesome display of squashes, pumpkins and onions is truly breathtaking.  A real work of art.

We have quite a few small family run vineyards in Cornwall, thriving because of our micro climate and warm gulf stream flowing past our coast.

Camel Valley struck gold at the International Wine Challenge 2014, with two gold medals for their sparkling wines!  Fifteen English wines received silver medals at the competition and an amazing 28 wines wine bronze medals.  What an incredible result for Great Britain (and Cornwall)!

Lower Barns is nestled in a small valley right next door to the award winning, family run Bosue Vineyard, producing white, rose, red and a very nice sparkling wine.  Run by Paul Sibly the vineyard is south facing, ideal for varieties of Rondo, Regent, Phoenix and Orion grapes.  All the grapes they use are grown at Bosue.  The first-vines were planted at Bosue in 1996 as a trial plot, followed by more extensive planting in 1999, 2004 and 2005.  They now have 4000 vines.

Orion and Phoenix are for the white wine, Rondo and Regent for the red and rose wine. These cool climate varieties are well suited to English wine production because they are high yielding and disease resistant.  They produce a dry white full of aroma and flavour with low acidity, a deeply coloured dry red and a fresh rose.

This year guests have been enjoying the Tour and Taste Stroll around the vines and a very informal chat, which they say is very enjoyable with Paul.

For full vineyard tours it’s best to book costing £7.50 per person, check out the website www.bosuevineyard.co.uk

I must say all our guests have come back, happy, with a bottle or 2, which is great because we don’t charge corkage at Lower Barns!  Enjoy your wine with dinner in the Shack.