If there is one thing I learned from Mercers’ after-work tour of the Fairmile Vineyard earlier this year, it is that becoming a vintner is not the career for someone with a short attention span – or indeed shallow pockets.

It takes years from first spotting that perfect grape-growing location to popping open your first bottle of fizz, and as local vineyard owner (and our tour guide for the evening) Jan Mirkowski explained to us, it is truly a labour of love, with no City firm likely to lend on such a venture. 

Still, for us as consumers, exploring Fairmile Vineyard more than a decade after the start of Jan and his wife Anthea’s winemaking journey, it was all worth it. And that evening the winemaking gods were smiling on us.

Our visit was a September highlight, as – with the sun shining and the sky a vivid blue – we hauled ourselves up the steep slopes past 12,000 vines to rest under an imposing plane tree; kept intact by Jan despite its vast trunk and wide canopy taking up perfect south-facing growing space for more grapes.  The hot and bright weather belied the damaging rains of early summer and spring, which in lesser quantities, we heard, would simply run off the chalky soil down the hill.

Fairmile Vineyard only produces sparkling wines: usually a sparkling Rose, a Classic Cuvee, and a Blanc de Blancs. Harvests blessed with a particular surfeit of grapes (they grow Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay) have also gone towards a Founder’s Reserve. And yes we did get to sample them. As we sat around a large wooden table in the evening sunshine, with views right across the valley, Jan poured our glasses and the connoisseurs among us competed to work out the main tastes (strawberries, apparently!)

Jan and Anthea bought the fields, hidden from the main tree-lined route out of Henley behind a Grade II listed wall, in 2011. As Jan explained the first years were spent making the land secure from deer and rabbits, planting those 12,000 vines (all put in the ground across one long day), waiting for them to mature, sending the resultant grapes off to the winemaker and then waiting for the bottles to be ready.

Even now, with the vineyard producing 20,000 bottles a year and with several awards under their belts, they battle shortages of skilled seasonal workers, mildew, and our often bizarre summer weather. All this to get your bottle of bubbly to your table!

And while every bottle tells a story, the story of winemaking itself in Britain is believed to stretch back to Roman times. Veni, vidi, viticulture, perhaps?