Danbury Ridge’s vineyards lie just a stone’s throw from their state-of-the-art winery, equidistant between the Blackwater and Crouch rivers, just outside the village of Danbury and less than five miles southwest of Maldon, of sea salt fame. 

Danbury Ridge sits atop a mosaic of five distinct soil types: deep gravel, sandy clay, calcareous marl (a mix of clay and limestone), illite and smectite clay. 

Illite and smectite clays are not only known for producing robust, generous wines (and some of the world's most expensive red wines e.g. Château Pétrus of Pomerol) but they are also renowned for their water-holding capacity, and in this part of England, where rainfall is noticeably far lower than average, that matters.

What also matters is that the vines can't access this water easily, they have to send their roots deep into the soil to access whatever small amounts of water they can find while picking up minerals and nutrients along the way.

The water is hidden in narrow intermittent layers of the clay and is essentially drip-fed via the extensive root systems to the vines above, ensuring the vines remain in a state of stress during the growing season.

A stressed vine is working hard to survive and produces a limited number of small, concentrated berries (to attract the birds for seed dispersal) with, lucky for us, the potential to make high quality wine; a happy vine with a constant supply of abundant and readily-available water will do the opposite!

It is so dry, in fact, that the vineyards are equipped with irrigation hoses. They’re not needed every year, but when rainfall can be virtually absent for over five months during the growing season, they can prove invaluable to prevent the vines going into shut down.