Back in Autumn 2011 a fantastic group of local people, led by Louise Ely designed and built a cob oven and shelter for Forty Hall Vineyard.
Since then, our volunteers have gathered together to share many happy lunches and conversations around the oven, so we are extremely grateful for their work in the early days of the Vineyard (you can see how young our vines look in the background of the photo!).
After some repair work Louise and Linda Royles (pictured below left) from the brilliant not for profit enterprise Cob in the Community returned to Forty Hall Farm to show us how to look after our prized oven. 
Their mission was to make a group of us, "Guardians of the Cob Oven", so with great gusto, Linda showed us how to maintain, heat and cook in our precious cob structure.
Once we 'd chopped fire wood and performed jenga with the sticks we got to light the fire and In our toasty oven we prepared pizza, plus a delicious pot of bean stew with jacket spuds made by Louise for our lunch.
We also scribbled out plans for how we can develop the oven and shelter area for future fundraising food and drink events that we can invite the public to.
It would be brilliant to make this happen, so if you or your business would be interested in sponsoring, or helping us develop the cob oven area for community Vineyard events please get in touch, we'd love to hear from you.You can contact us here.
To set the scene... here's the view from the cob oven area at this time of year (and our vines are a lot more established since 2011!).
Last week we toasted the end of harvest with a first tasting of our 2019 London Brut. The verdict …
