Oak Hill Wines, produced by Willow House Vineyard in the centre of the village of Fressingfield, Suffolk, is named after a small woodland once crowning the hill behind the church. We have a magnificent, ancient oak tree in the middle of the vineyard, overlooking the vines. It is estimated to be between eight and nine hundred years old. It lost half of its crown in The Great Storm of 1987 and now the trunk is partly hollow, providing a very rich habitat for insects, birds and animals - from beneath its roots to the top of its crown it is teeming with life. It is said that vintage oaks “take 300 years to grow, 300 to live and 300 to die” - so ours is in the middle of the third stage of its life.
The vineyard was planted in 1987 with 400 vines of the Bacchus variety producing white wines with an attractive, fruity bouquet. Bacchus is generally regarded as the variety best-suited to the UK climate. The vines have been pruned and trained to produce a canopy at head height, which makes things so much easier for pruning and picking.
Our harvest is usually in mid-October; the grapes are hand-picked and pressed on the same day to create our consistently high quality, award-winning wines.
