How many of us dream of leaving the city, leaving our jobs, getting away from it all to do something more rural, more romantic — something like running a vineyard? In 2022, communication executive Sophie Brendel and her husband Panu Long, an event manager and drinks consultant, did just that. They upped sticks from London and moved to a 250-year-old Somerset farmstead, following their pipe dream of making their own organic cider and wine. Neither of them had farmed before. For some, the prospect would be terrifying. Brendel, however, goes with “exhilarating”.
“There are lots of things we worry about,” admits Long of their burgeoning endeavour, launching this spring as Thornfalcon Winery and Press. Should a freak frost occur, for example, the couple are poised to run out at midnight and distribute lit paraffin candles, raising the temperature between the vines. More likely is a period of drought; they have on-site weather stations linked to five satellites, and irrigation from their on-site bore hole. Or deer cropping the vine shoots and destroying the growth; alarms are set up to scare them off with flashing lights — and BBC Radio 4 (deer don’t like the sound of the human voice).
It’s easy to see why the couple were enamoured with the 40-acre property, though. In the village of Thornfalcon, between Taunton and Ilminster in south-west Somerset, the location is magnificent, with views across to the Blackdown and Quantock Hills. The farmhouse of blue lias (a local limestone) is flanked by wild-flower meadows, woodlands, a 2-acre swimming lake with swans and otters, and a further 30 acres of farmable land. There are two mature apple orchards, while the aspect and loamy soil of the fields provides a fertile bed for growing grapes. As climate change starts to make conditions in France’s Champagne region unstable, the UK is becoming a beguiling terroir.
“There’s an extra level of pressure in that Thornfalcon is also our home,” says Brendel, who at 6ft in wellies and a denim dress, is brimful of energy and plans. “We’re all in.”
Aptly, the couple met by the cider tent at Standon Calling festival in Hertfordshire. Neither was particularly green-fingered. Long’s job shaking cocktails at the Met Bar (in its just-launched glory days in the late 1990s) evolved into a career running drinks at international events, such as the Baftas and Elton John’s White Tie & Tiara Ball. At 6ft 5in, he is taller still than Brendel and, in contrast to her electricity, has a more laid-back charisma. Brendel, meanwhile, had gone from head of digital communications at the BBC to director of marketing and communications at the Victoria and Albert Museum. “We spent our holidays exploring European vineyards and the cider orchards of Normandy,” says Brendel. “We dreamt of setting up something of our own.”
When the pandemic hit and the event world ground to a halt, Long took the opportunity to reskill with vine-growing and winemaking courses (he’s still studying for his WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) diploma. Brendel continued as the nexus of the V&A’s strategy as it expanded into a family of museums — until she contracted long Covid. She returned to her childhood home in Dorset, close to where Long grew up, and was bedbound for months.
“I found being in nature calming, centring,” says Brendel. They started the property hunt. But a year of looking in Dorset proved fruitless. Then their old friend, the fashion designer Alice Temperley, invited them to stay in her Somerset home, close to where her father makes the award-winning Burrow Hill Cider. “It was the first of their Cider Bus Saturdays,” recalls Brendel of the now regular events. “There were acrobats in the fields and a band; it was so bohemian and wonderful.” The next week the property at Thornfalcon came up for sale. They sold their home in Islington, north London, days later.
In Somerset they have created a welcoming home that is a stylish mix of contemporary art and more traditional furnishings. All of the furniture — from the blue Chesterfield sofa by the fire in the living room, to the 19th- century Sussex chairs in the bedrooms — is second-hand. While still sick in bed, Brendel made mood boards of how she wanted the house to look and scoured online auctions.
“Panu suddenly started seeing all these boxes arrive, three months before we moved,” she says. “I had a multicoloured spreadsheet of every item, where it was being stored, which room it was going into.” Two weeks after completing, their new home was furnished and ready to host a large family Christmas.
Throughout the house, cushions and curtains were all made by Brendel. Much of the art, meanwhile, is from friends. Frames along the staircase reveal a birthday card drawn by artist Annie Morris alongside photos of their children, Lara and Sasha; a piece of gold ceramic that was a gift from Edmund de Waal (to celebrate the opening of the Young V&A in east London), and a letter from Brendel’s father, the pianist Alfred Brendel, given at her 21st birthday.
The farmhouse kitchen is a warm, bright space looking out on to a small pond; there is a wide scrubbed wooden table, and a stove hung with strings of dried chillies and homemade lavender wreaths. On the table there’s sourdough from Bonners deli in Ilminster and blue eggs from their Legbar hens. Along with land, they inherited doves, geese and a roost of ageing chickens. An elderly hen broke its leg six weeks after they moved in, says Brendel. “I will never forget trying to memorise the 13 steps on wikiHow of how humanely to kill a chicken.”
Their new life has been “a steep learning curve”, says Long. “We are fortunate the old owners became friends and advised us about managing the land.” Their gardener, artist Helen Knight, still tends to the vegetable garden, with its gargantuan radishes, multiple varieties of lettuce, rocket, peas and asparagus, building hazel wands around the foxgloves and peonies that promote cross-pollination. Estate manager Jeremy Carey has also stayed on.
In 2023, the couple planted the first vineyard by hand, focusing on varieties traditionally used in Champagne: Chardonnay and Pinot Noir Meunier. Last summer, they added hardier hybrid winemaking varietals, including Voltis and Cabernet Noir (which Long could layer into either sparkling or still wine). Their approach is as organic as possible: no herbicides, while local sheep — and their lambs — graze between the vines.
The zero-sprayed, fully organic orchards, planted with mainly Kingston Black as well as Browns, Stembridge Cluster and Porter’s Perfection, already produce some 10 tonnes of apples a year, though they intend to plant more. Using the farm’s 150-year-old apple press, Long hopes to create their first limited edition of keeved cider this summer. “Keeved is an off-dry cider, which finishes its fermentation in a champagne bottle,” he explains. “It’s not sweet, and is naturally carbonated like a sparkling wine would be.”
All going well, they will join a burgeoning moment in British cider — the Fine Cider Company distributes labels such as Naughton Cider and Find & Foster, at up to £35 a bottle, direct to consumers but also to Michelin-starred restaurants such as the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, and Lyle’s and The Ledbury in London.
“We are learning how to navigate marriage and setting up a business, which can’t be one and the same thing,” says Long, stroking their black Labrador, Captain. “You need to sit down and have meetings. It can go wrong if you assume you know what the other person is thinking.”
Where Long’s purview is transforming plants to something you’d want to drink, Brendel has a wider brief. “If it takes seven years from planting a vine to your first bottle of sparkling wine, we need to have a sustainable financial model which balances running costs,” she says.
Central to this is accommodation. She designed a shepherd’s hut, looking out across the vines: a charming bedroom with Lake August nasturtium wallpaper, a tiny log stove in the living room and a hammered copper bath out under the stars. This and the lambing shed, with its wood-fired bath for two, and the two-bedroom coach house can all be booked with access to the lake and a waterside wood-fired sauna — an essential addition since Long’s mother is Finnish and he takes sauna seriously.
Brendel brings to Thornfalcon a track record with business strategy. “It is my background — what I did at the V&A and at the BBC,” she says. “Now, as a strategic consultant, I’m working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Somerset House.”
Still, it’s been, at times, a bumpy ride. When the delivery of the shepherd’s hut was delayed, it wiped out some eight months of rental income — “and for a while it looked like the supplier might go bankrupt with our money: that’s the challenge of wanting to work with smaller businesses”. Then there’s the changing landscape of grants, with many vanishing since Brexit. Some costs, such as thatching the roof, keep rising. In the second phase of Thornfalcon’s development, they will take on investment to convert a textured stone outbuilding that looks across the vines to Thorn Hill into an events space: as well as hosting supper clubs, plans include a wine school and corporate hospitality.
Plenty of people are ready to share the dream, and support it. A good deal of the first cider harvest was done in one day, when friends and their children from the village turned out to gather the windfall apples. They are also helped out by volunteers from the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms — Wwoofers — who come and work for five hours a day in exchange for board and lodging. “It’s a magic place, and we are excited to share it,” says Brendel, underlining a crucial element in her business plan. “These days, if something doesn’t bring me joy I am not interested.”
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