Coopers Croft Vineyard - A Hand-Tended Suffolk Vineyard in Wickhambrook
Tucked into a gentle, south-facing slope in the Suffolk village of Wickhambrook, between Newmarket and Bury St Edmunds, Coopers Croft Vineyard is a quietly ambitious one-acre patch of English wine country. The site has been described by its owner as imperfect, windswept and rooted in heavy clay, yet it has produced a Rosé that earned a bronze medal at the 2017 East Anglian Wine Awards. What makes the place remarkable is not its scale but the meticulous, hand-tended way in which every one of its thousand vines is looked after.
Anyone interested in tasting or buying the wine is invited to make contact directly via cooperscroftvineyard@hotmail.com or by phone on 01440 820953. The full postal address is Coopers Croft Vineyard, Ashfield Green, Wickhambrook, Newmarket, Suffolk CB8 8UZ.
Location and Setting
Coopers Croft sits roughly 100 metres above sea level on a five-acre smallholding that was originally a corner of an arable field sold off some years before the current owners bought it. The village of Wickhambrook is a quiet rural community on the Suffolk - Cambridgeshire border, sandwiched between the racing town of Newmarket and the historic market town of Bury St Edmunds. The location was chosen not for the glamour of a famous wine region but for the practical balance of a manageable commute, a house the family loved, and the right piece of ground. As the owner puts it:
What I have learnt from my site. There are obviously ideal sites in the world; Napa, Malborough, Mendoza, to name but a few. For me a South facing slope was enough. For me the balance was in location for the day job, a house the wife liked, ok loved.
The site's south-facing aspect gives the vines their best chance to ripen in a relatively short English growing season, while the gentle slope helps cold air drain away to lower ground - an important consideration in a frost-prone inland spot.
The Soil and Terrain
Coopers Croft is honest about the challenges of its ground. The top six inches is a thin band of topsoil, beneath which lies roughly two feet of heavy clay, and below that the brashy chalk that gives parts of East Anglia its characterful minerality. Before planting, the owner studied freely available soil classification resources, including landis.org.uk/soilscapes, and has written about the trade-offs at length:
- Topsoil: Thin, previously depleted by years of intensive arable production. Spent mushroom compost has since been added to lift organic content.
- Clay: Holds water and nutrients well but takes an age to warm up in spring and is difficult to work. Cultivation to break the clay pan is essential.
- Chalk: Drives an alkaline pH, which suits the chosen rootstock, and contributes to the mineral character of the finished wine.
Because the site is exposed, the family has also planted windbreak hedging - the original house was even renamed from 'Windy Heights' when they moved in - to shelter the rows from the prevailing winds that sweep across the open field.
How It All Began
The vineyard story starts well before 2012. The owner traces his love of winemaking to childhood, watching his own father make wine at home, and to a summer holiday in 2002 spent in the southern Rhône. At Chateau Trignon near Nyons he tasted fresh grape juice straight from the vat; at Chateau La Canorgue - where the film A Good Year was shot - and at Domaine de la Garrigue he watched the harvest and the simple cork-and-bottle ritual of two men smoking Gitane cigarettes. He fell in love with Ventoux wine, but knew those varieties could not thrive in the British climate.
Back home in Bury St Edmunds, he picked up two vines from the gardens of Wyken Hall in June 2003 and planted them in the walled garden of his Victorian town house. A few cuttings of Madeleine Angevine joined them. The vines grew. By 2005 there was a first small harvest, made into wine with what the owner cheerfully remembers as a potato masher. Subsequent harvests followed in 2006, 2007 (a white-grape year) and 2008 (the first red-grape vintage). Those kitchen-scale experiments convinced him that he could, and should, take the next step.
Finding the Field
After house-hunting and field-hunting in parallel, the family found a five-acre south-facing sloping site that ticked most of the boxes. They completed on the property in early 2011 and set about clearing scrub and grassland that had grown up since the field was split off from a larger arable block. As the owner later reflected:
The site may not be ideal; 100m above sea level, the soil not perfect; clay with chalk, but I had passion and would learn as much as I could.
The first block of ground was simply power-harrowed to a shallow three or four inches to clear surface weeds. With hindsight, deeper subsoiling would have been better to break up the clay pan, but the lesson has been applied to every block planted since.
Planting the Vines
Spring 2012 saw the first 300 Pinot Noir vines go into the ground on SO4 rootstock, the choice made largely for its tolerance of the site's alkaline, chalky conditions. Establishment was slow and steady rather than spectacular; the owner takes some pride in the fact that his vines did not race away in their first year, noting that 'for a good site the vines have to struggle - this seems to be a known fact. Better characters come from stressed vines.'
Encouraged by the first block, the vineyard was doubled with a further 700 vines, bringing the total to a thousand: 500 Pinot Noir and 500 Bacchus. The Pinot block now produces the fruit for the vineyard's award-winning Rosé, and the Bacchus block sits alongside it, all individually tended by hand. A few experimental vines - a small amount of Rondo, Madeleine Angevine and Cabernet Sauvignon - were tucked in among the Pinot to test what might one day be added to the planting.
Vineyard Life in Practice
Running a one-acre vineyard around a day job and a young family has demanded some hard-headed routine. The owner's own account of the 2015 season remains the most candid window into the working year at Coopers Croft.
Spring: Bud Burst and Frost
Pruning gives way to bud burst, usually in early May, with the swelling buds protected by plastic tubes. Late frosts are a constant worry - a sharp drop can damage or kill the season's primary buds and compromise future seasons' trellising as well. To minimise the risk, the owner has attended an East Anglian Vineyards Association (EAVA) 'waffle and walk' at Bardfield Vineyard to study 'tow and blow' frost-prevention equipment, in which moving air prevents damaging ice from forming on the young growth.
Training and Qualifications
Looking after a thousand vines responsibly requires more than enthusiasm. The owner has completed the NPTC PA3A air-assisted sprayer certificate, which is necessary for the lawful application of fungicides and foliar nutrients through the vine canopy. Input programmes are planned around weather windows and growth stages.
Weed Control
Clearing the strip of ground beneath each vine is unglamorous but essential. A non-selective herbicide, applied at the appropriate rate and only when plastic trunk guards are in place, takes out competitive weeds that would otherwise steal moisture, nutrients and warmth from the vine root zone.
Canopy, Wire and End-Posts
Wires have to be strung, tensioned and anchored - the Bacchus block alone required another six kilometres of wire at the time of writing, with the help of the owner's father-in-law. End-post anchoring depends on soil conditions, and the owner is frank about the fact that the right day to do it sometimes has to wait.
Summer and Harvest
Long summer evenings are spent in the vineyard, often from 5.30am, with podcasts for company while the children sleep. The honest confession is that spraying every seven days, staying on top of weeds and improving canopy management all at once, with two small children and a day job, is not always possible. Every year is a balance between ambition and what the season, the family and the weather allow.
The Wines
Today, the headline wine from Coopers Croft is a still Rosé made from the Pinot Noir block. It was the 2017 vintage that brought the vineyard its first notable recognition - a bronze medal at the East Anglian Wine Awards - confirming that the combination of site, rootstock and careful hand-tending can produce something genuinely competitive on the regional stage.
The Bacchus block, planted later, is still finding its feet. Bacchus is widely regarded as one of the most suitable white varieties for the cooler UK climate, and Coopers Croft's early experience of it is mixed - the owner has written openly that 'my current feeling is the Bacchus… looks poor and I'm not impressed by it. More inputs/husbandry required. Whereas the Pinot Noir looks good, really happy with it.' That willingness to be honest about what is and is not working is part of the charm of the project.
All sales and tastings are handled personally by the owners, with no online ordering currently available.
Supplying Local Establishments
The vineyard supplies its Rosé to a small number of local establishments and events in and around Wickhambrook, Newmarket and Bury St Edmunds. Stockists and event organisers interested in taking Coopers Croft Rosé can enquire by email.
Visiting the Vineyard
Coopers Croft does not run a fixed programme of public tours, tastings or open days, but visits and tastings are welcomed by arrangement. Anyone wishing to walk the rows, taste the current release, or talk through the winemaking is asked to contact the owners in advance by email at cooperscroftvineyard@hotmail.com or by telephone on 01440 820953. Visitors are advised to confirm arrangements before setting out.
Looking Ahead
The big questions facing Coopers Croft are familiar to any small UK vineyard: when to invest in a tractor and a proper mounted sprayer; how to balance time in the vineyard with family life; whether the existing Pinot and Bacchus blocks should be expanded, or whether it would be wiser to diversify into the more promising oddities already in the ground - Rondo, Madeleine Angevine and the still-unripening Cabernet Sauvignon.
The next phase, the owner hopes, will involve a dozen varieties on a dozen rootstocks, each carefully matched to its patch of ground, and a vineyard that is finally large enough to pay for itself while remaining small enough to be hand-tended vine by vine. Whatever direction the project takes, the underlying philosophy remains the same: better wine comes from vines that are allowed to struggle a little, in soil that has been learned rather than replaced, by a family that knows each of its thousand plants by name.
Practical Information
- Address: Coopers Croft Vineyard, Ashfield Green, Wickhambrook, Newmarket, Suffolk CB8 8UZ
- Telephone: 01440 820953
- Email: cooperscroftvineyard@hotmail.com
- Website: cooperscroftvineyard.wordpress.com
- Wines: Rosé (Pinot Noir), with Bacchus in development
- Visits & tastings: By appointment only - please contact in advance