There may be thousands of types of grapes in the world but there’s only one George Bowden.
George, 75, owns a small vineyard in Leeds, where he likes to work alone in peace and care for his crops across his five and half acres of land. Content with his lot, he refuses to expand it even though customers have begged for more from the award-winning wine-maker, with failed attempts to persuade him into buying twice as much land.
Leventhorpe Vineyard is located in Woodlesford, a south-east suburb of the Leeds district. Leventhorpe, named after local stately home Leventhorpe Hall, “rolls off the tongue” just like a good wine, says George who planted the first seeds in 1985 and owns the land with his wife Janet.
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The retired teacher says he specialises in making “high quality wines” and produces “some of the best sparkling wines in the world”, along with a range of dry white wines and a small amount of red.
The retired chemistry teacher, who lives in Oakwood, doesn’t employ anyone else to work on his crops but brings in helpers occasionally when the grapes need to be picked. He’s perfectly happy keeping the vineyard small-scale - and for good reason.
The father-of-one explains: “Officially, the Ministry of Agriculture says any vineyard the size of a quarter of an acre and above has to be classed as commercial as you couldn’t drink all of the wine from it. So if you do drink all of the wine yourself, you must be giving it away so therefore you have to pay excise duty on it.
“My vineyard is five and half acres - it's small. Put it this way, it’s a vineyard size that one man and occasional helpers, pickers, can control. You can make a reasonable amount of money on it.
“But then the ‘obvious’ thing people say is ‘Why not expand to ten acres? You’ll earn twice as much!’. Well you don’t because then you’ve got to employ other people and agencies. You’ve got to go into 20 acres to start making substantial profits again.”
George used to travel around the world when he was working and says a man in California who made great wine inspired him to make his own in Yorkshire. The Californian told him how people in general would dismiss domestically produced wine and proved how that was utter nonsense.
He says there’s no space in wine making for vanity and it all comes down to the science, he remarks: “You’ve got to pick the right grapes for the right soil. There’s no use picking certain grapes because you think the customer will like them, you’ve got to pick the grapes that will do the job well.”
This can be tricky as George points out there are thousands of different types of grapes. Nevertheless, his enterprise has been an absolute success. George has won multiple awards and was even graced by a royal visit in 2007 when Prince Phillip, the Duke of Kent dropped by.
George said: “The Duke of Kent had a walk around on the land but we had to do it all officially. He couldn’t just call on me.”
Asked if he gave the Duke a free case of wine, George said: “I gave him a few tips on how to grow grapes.” But then relented: “He had a few bottles of wine as well. I was quite pleased with that.”
George seems more proud of famous British wine writer Oz Clarke’s comments on his wine.
Swelling up with pride, George said: “You’ll be surprised about the comments he makes about the wine from here. Our little vineyard amongst all the big boys.”
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