With less than 48 hours in Kent we visited two destination wine estates and packed in a tour & tasting, dinner in a fine dining vineyard restaurant, a lunchtime platter, a walk in the vines and a tutored tasting.
We based ourselves in Tenterden and our first stop was Chapel Down, located in beautiful Kent countryside very close by. Despite the proximity we were advised not to walk as the country lane leading to it has no paths. The Chapel Down website makes it clear you need to book taxis in advance, but as a city dweller I didn’t appreciate that meant weeks in advance! The week before I was scrabbling around to find transport.
Chapel Down are open all year round and operate multiple tours most days. We booked late afternoon and after an extensive tour of the vines and winery we arrived in the tasting room. We were desperate to actually start trying some wine, but our guide was keen to answer questions first – and there were lots of them – which was great but we could have happily sipped and listened! We ended up rushing our way through the three sparkling and three still wines to make it to our dinner reservation in the onsite Swan Wine Kitchen. This 2AA Rosette restaurant offered a fabulous 3 course dinner with imaginatively served, locally sourced food. Wine flights were available allowing us to try more of the Chapel Down range.
We stayed overnight in The Woolpack, a quaint pub owned by Balfour Hush Heath Estate – which was our venue for the following day and was about 25 minutes by pre-booked taxi from Tenterden. Balfour Hush Heath Estate now promotes a free shuttle bus from Marden train station on Saturdays and Sundays which sounds a great idea (and takes away the stressful game of ‘hunt the taxi’).
We started by enjoying a delicious platter of breads, pate, hummus and cheese whilst sitting outside on a terrace, looking across at the vines accompanied by a glass of bubbly. Absolute bliss! It's worth noting that if the weather hadn’t been favourable there was a large indoor area with huge glass windows so you could still enjoy the view.
Having done a vineyard tour the day before we opted for a tutored tasting and sampled six wines, four sparkling and two still. We happened to be the first group in their newest tasting room and having been entertained with stories of the owners and how the vineyard started, we got to meet Richard Balfour-Lynn who popped past to see what we thought of the new facility.
The Garden of Kent has a number of vineyards and if you have a designated driver it would be easy to combine more. As lovers of sparkling wine, good food and rolling vines it was the perfect weekend break.
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