Arriving at the Old Luxters Farmhouse at Chiltern Valley Winery and Brewery this could be the Champagne region. Neat rows of vines growing on south-facing hills. Sun glinting on a white soil of limestone, marl and clay – with added minerality from 150-million-year-old oyster fossils. A chalky seam that swirls north-west from Chablis through the Champagne region, under the Channel, and onto the south of England.

Seven miles north of Henley-on-Thames’ and seven miles west of Marlow this promising terroir was a pig-farm until David Ealand, once a maritime lawyer, purchased the land in 1980 and commissioned a soil analysis. “Grow grapes or rhubarb,” was the recommendation. Farewell pigs.

Some 70 awards later for wine, beer and spirits, visitors drop-in for generous tastings and to stay in comfortable rooms at the timber-beamed farmhouse. 

A mere 40 miles west of London, a

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