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Joining me on today’s episode of the English Wine Diaries is Jules Perowne from Cobble Hill, the award-winning vineyard on the North Norfolk coast farmed by the Perowne family for five generations.

It was Jules who gave her father Robert the vine that started it all — a 60th birthday present in 2016 that grew, within a year, into 17 rows planted on a ten-acre south-facing plot he'd bought two decades earlier.

Robert's hunch about the site's chalky, frost-free soil paid off, and the vineyard soon expanded to 150 rows of Bacchus, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with a 200-year-old barn on the farm converted into a working winery.

As the vineyard's ambitions grew, so did Jules' involvement. Bringing in industry heavyweights including former Decanter editor Guy Woodward and viticultural consultant Stephen Skelton, she helped assemble the team now led by consultant winemaker Emma Rice, who produces Cobble Hill's small, focused range of still and sparkling English wines.

By day, Jules runs Perowne International, the global travel and lifestyle communications consultancy she founded, with offices in London, Milan, New York and Mexico City. But Norfolk remains her happy place — the farm where she grew up — and she now brings the same marketing and branding instincts she's honed over 20 years in luxury hospitality to bear on Cobble Hill's next chapter.

We talk about the trials and tribulations of farming in the 21st century, what the world of tourism can bring to the industry and how Norfolk is earning its place on the wine map.

Find out more about Cobble Hill at cobblehillnorfolk.com and follow the team on Instagram @cobblehillwine.

Thanks to English Wine Diaries series sponsor Rankin Bros & Sons — trusted suppliers of corks, closures, and packaging solutions to the UK wine industry since 1774. To learn more about how Rankin is supporting the future of British wine, visit rankincork.co.uk.

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