Did you know that wine tourism is on the rise in the UK? Well, thanks to a friend who created the fabulous Wine Cellar Door website, I took a trip to Somerset earlier in the season to meet some local wine producers. It was a quest for new material for a series of vineyard paintings to celebrate what we produce locally and the fact that you don’t have to be in France to produce amazing fizz!
One of the vineyards I visited, was Smith & Evans, located on a high plot above the stunning Somerset Levels. It produces an award-winning sparkling wine from the classic ‘Champagne’ combination of the Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier grapes. I start off with some preliminary sketches. It’s a real challenge painting a vineyard as the composition can be repetitive but there are ways around that. In this case the extraordinary rolling flat landscape, unique to this area, was a fabulous bonus and something I knew I had to include.
So I set to work, sketching out the scene and slowly building up the colours but not quite knowing where it would lead. I was particularly taken with the beautiful leaves of the Pinot Meunier vine which have an almost silvery, dusty quality about them – like a dusting of flour – which is, in fact, why the grape is called Meunier in the first place, as it is French for the word ‘miller’!
Keen to represent this exciting fact, I choose my colour palette carefully and added some final silvery green splashes to the painting in homage to my new found knowledge. There are so many wonderful vineyards open to the public here in the UK, so if you are interested in exploring too, you can visit the Wine Cellar Door website or better still, download their exciting new app! Do let me know if you go and see some !
