FOOD & DR INK
wife, was at the County High School in Chelmsford – we’ve known each other for ever,” he explains. “We first moved to west London, to Henley-on-Thames – and from there, I got a job with Mars and then it was here, there and everywhere: central Europe, the states, the Far East – it was great. Of course, I miss it. But the irony is – this is more difficult,” he laughs. Finding himself able to leave his corporate career and return to the UK with his family, Paul started searching for a plot of land on which to develop his long-held interest in sparkling wines. “I’ve always been a bit of a foodie, because of our international life,” he says, “but the bit I didn’t understand in the process was the growing. As part of my work for Mars, I bought coffee and cocoa, and I understood it was grown by teams of people – but
houses. But if you can create something that keeps the countryside green, then maybe that’s how places like Champagne and Chablis have retained their identity. “Everybody said to me: ‘You won’t get chardonnay to ripen here: you’re too far north,’ – but we’re not, really. Champagne isn’t on the coast: it’s in the centre, it’s up slopes. It gets pretty hot in the summer, and pretty cold in the winter, and they have lots of frost – so I was thinking – ‘Well – what’s the difference?’ There’s no doubt in my mind that this will become a wine-growing region.” The cooler months of the year are a quieter time for the team: the 2019 harvest completed in October, so the focus now turns to fermentation, which is a risky but exciting time for the relatively young vineyard. “We’re reviewing what we decided to do with the grapes when they were in the field: how many litres of classic cuvée, how many litres of blanc du blancs – and can we deliver what we thought?” says Paul. “To be sustainable, we have to repeat what we created the previous year – but each year, particularly as a developing vineyard, you don’t really know what you’re going to get. It’s all a learning curve: we’ve never done it before,” he smiles. Paul and his family moved back from the Far East in 2006, after spending many years in the region working for the global food company Mars. “Originally, I was at grammar school in Essex and Ross, my
ucked away on a hillside just a short cycle ride north of Saffron Walden lies a hidden sparkling wine vineyard that won’t be a secret for long. For the past ten years, Saffron Grange has been quietly tending vines and blending wines on the chalky hillsides found to the south of Cambridge, and released its first trio of premium- quality vintage sparkling wines earlier this year, which have already earned a small but fanatical following among our region’s food and drink lovers. Established in 2008 by the Edwards family, headed up by husband and wife Paul and Ross, Saffron Grange is proudly putting down roots to ensure the future of our region’s burgeoning wine industry and – in the face of undeniable climate change – perhaps the very countryside itself. “I don’t really regard it as a big vision: it just seems, practically, to be the right thing to do,” Paul explains. “When I look around here and see hillsides covered with cereal crops and oilseed rape and all the rest of it, I think: what are you going to do with that land? The alternative is to build
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