Sark's first harvest

Image

The tiny carless island of Sark in the English Channel, about eight miles from Guernsey and 20 miles from the Normandy coast, has produced its first commercial wine-grape harvest.

Sark Estate Management, who also run hotels and restaurants on the island, have invested around a million pounds so far and clearly have tourism as well as wine in mind, although they do seem to be taking the vineyards seriously: they engaged Bordeaux winemaker Dr Alain Raynaud (below, pensive with pipe) to do a soil analysis in 2010 and have planted around 100,000 vines (2% of the total land area) in...