The Impact of Winning

“The nation saw me crying,” he admits, adding: “In fact, everyone from the presenter to the cameraman was crying, but only I made the final edit.” It was worth it, though – the broadcast was followed by a clear “uptick in sales”.

Winemaker Sam had only recently received the news that not only had the King rolled over the Royal Warrant granted in 2018 when he was Prince of Wales, but Queen Camilla had given Camel Valley her own seal of approval, making the product one of only seven – and the sole food and drink producer – to boast both crests on its labels.

Sam’s father Bob, who planted the first vines in 1989 with wife Annie, was on holiday when the news arrived. “When the post came, the letter on top was from the royal household, and it was about the warrant from the King,” Sam recalls. “I phoned Dad, told him the good news, and didn’t open the rest of the post until two hours later, when I found the letter about the Queen’s warrant at the very bottom. I was back on the phone to Dad, whose reaction was very similar to mine.”

What was so moving? “I hadn’t realised how strongly I felt about having the original warrant – we hadn’t even thought about getting two. It was great news, the kind you’re only ever going to get once.

“In our industry, there are people who do what they do with a lot of marketing, but they don’t have a double royal warrant. We don’t do that, and we do have a double Royal warrant. It’s amazing to have both, and we are very proud.”

That gets to the very heart of the Camel Valley strategy. First: “We make the best wine we possibly can.” Their success on that front is evident in the number of prestigious awards won: famously, Camel Valley’s 2009 Pinot Noir Rosé was crowned Sparkling Rosé World Champion ahead of Bollinger Champagne rosé, and remains one of the label’s bestsellers to date along with its signature white counterpart.

Second: rely on word of mouth. “It’s much more effective for people to talk about us to people who trust them, than to spend a lot of resource on something that may or may not be quite right,” says Sam.

“We are lucky a lot of people visit us when in Cornwall on holiday. Our customer base changes every week. We have shown a lot of people around over 35 years – these days, that could amount to 30,000 people in a year. For us, that accounts for more than clever marketing.”

Don’t expect to find Camel Valley setting TikTok alight either. “Social media is so complex. Whereas once it was just Facebook and Twitter, there are now multiple platforms with different audiences, requiring a team of people with a good game plan. There are only six of us – and we make good wine.”

Those six are hands-on, year-round, in the vineyard. When summer comes, the cellar doors are flung open to welcome visitors; autumn brings harvest, and winter is all about pruning and bottling. “Everyone is very flexible. You have to work hard, but we still manage to stick to a 40-hour week. That work-life balance is important to us.”

It’s astonishing to think this huge success story grew out of a happy accident, when Bob and Annie bought the only bit of land they could afford to start up a 300-strong sheep farm. Having discovered the south-facing slopes turned brown in the summer sun, they planted vines as an experiment – five acres for Annie (which she still lovingly tends herself), three for Bob, who also made the wine.

“My parents didn’t start off with a great load of money, and everything they made from growing vines was invested back into the business,” Sam recalls. “They thought if the winery didn’t work out, they could turn it into a holiday cottage. What happened is beyond their wildest dreams.”

In many ways, vineyard life resembles any other type of farming, only with knobs on. “We grow grapes like a farmer, but then we process them,” Sam explains. “Fermenting is a primary activity, but then we are bottling, labelling, selling, exporting. We might have seven or eight products, from different years, going through different channels. But unlike some producers, we have the advantage of meeting our contacts and customers and showing them what we do.”

Those customers include Waitrose, Fortnum & Mason, and of course, many local outlets including the Great Cornish Food Store. It’s lovely exporting as far afield as Japan, but nothing beats the home sales market. “All the good things that happen are from having people drink our wine in Cornwall.”

Maths graduate Sam joined the business in 1992, having decided a career in the City wasn’t for him, but wine definitely was. “I couldn’t have come back to the family sheep farm,” he admits. “It wouldn’t have been economically viable, and would never have fed another adult.

“In contrast, it was lovely to come back and work in the vineyard. It has never felt like mine or my parents’, because no one is really in charge. Everyone who works here just pulls together for the thrill of making really good wine.”

Ask what the future holds, and two words escape Sam’s lips: climate change. “It’s happening very quickly, and the style of wine we make currently will be more difficult to achieve,” he admits. “How we maintain that quality as the wine evolves is the challenge. But my favourite saying is: ‘The future is already out there – it’s just somewhere else.’ It’s going to be the same temperature here in 20 years as it was in Burgundy 20 years ago. We need to look further south.”

Ultimately, his philosophy remains the same it always has: “It’s easy to make good wine by making the right wine for the grapes, not the wine everyone else is making. That’s what we’ve done all along – my parents didn’t know anything about wine, so they weren’t trying to make it like anything else.”

His own aversion to focusing on the latest trends is backed up by the very nature of viticulture. “You can’t suddenly make more of something just because it’s popular. You have to order new vines now, for delivery in spring, then pick the grapes four years later, for the wine to be ready two years after that. So you can only make the best set of wines possible, then sell them.”

Is there a third Lindo generation waiting in the wings? “My eldest daughter is 13 and loves coming into work, not least because she gets paid,” Sam laughs. “My younger daughter is 12, my son 10, and they like doing things – there’s a job to suit every personality here. But there’s no pressure – I’d rather they do something they want to do and join in later – a bit like me. That way, you can bring new things to the business.”