Bride Valley, established by Steven Spurrier in Dorset, England, is for sale again

Just two years after being purchased by the current owners, Bride Valley is on the market with an asking price of £3 million.

It’s an interesting time in the English wine industry. Over the last two decades we’ve seen vineyard area in England (and also a bit in Wales) expand significantly. But it’s proving to be a hard time for selling wine, and so quite a few vineyards are for sale.

The latest to hit the market is Bride Valley, which is a sparkling wine house that was established by well known wine personality Steven Spurrier in Dorset. Shortly after he died, it was sold privately, and now two years later the new owners are putting it up for sale because they are moving abroad.

The current owners are Alasdair Warren and Mark Barnham as per this Drinks Business article from when they made the purchase.

You can see the very detailed listing at the Strutt and Parker website. There’s some interesting information here. Altogether there are just under 10 hectares of vines, and the average yield is 4 tonnes per hectare, giving around 40 tonnes of grapes in a good year.

Companies House have the details of Bride Valley Vineyards, and from what I can see, it isn’t making a profit at the moment. There’s also a company called Bride Valley Wines which takes all the stock in bond as soon as the wine is bottled. From the Companies House information, it seems as if the vineyard is still in the control of the Spurrier family.

The guide purchase price is £3 million, but this includes three lots, one of which is the vineyard and cellar door, one a four-bedroom house, and the third a small-ish patch of farmland.

The details of the sale say that the name Bride Valley and the existing stock are for sale via a separate negotiation.

This is just my opinion, but it’s not a great time to be selling a vineyard, and this doesn’t look a tempting proposition.

I think that the only way this could work financially is if you bought the vineyard only, and started again, without the existing Bride Valley stock and name. And you’d have to make stunning, critically acclaimed wines that sold at a high price.

And, as with any traditional method sparkling wine producer, it’s going to be three years or so until you can sell any wine from the new regime.

Many people dream of owning a vineyard, and this one does look beautiful. But I can’t not think about annual operating costs (significant), the risk of a marginal climate, low yields, and then the difficulty of selling the wine. It’s very easy to lose a lot of money in the wine game.