Sparkling success: Pebblebed wins Dragon's backing

Within 12 hours of Geoff Bowen’s appearance on BBC’s Dragon’s Den, he had received 100 requests for more information – not something you’d normally expect from an English vigneron in the rural Devon town of Topsham.

But then there’s nothing that “normal” about the way Bowen runs his business. To begin with, rather than ending up in hock to the bank, he persuaded 20 other families to get involved with his initial Pebblebed vineyard purchase. Currently he has 22 acres spread over three sites.

And “involved” doesn’t just mean money, it’s joining in at harvest. Although even that seems different. Rather than a straight run of backbreaking days from dawn to dusk, once Bowen decides the time is right, everyone joins in for a morning’s picking for five Saturdays in a row, followed by coffee and croissants.

As well as his 20 partner families, Bowen welcomes others, putting an ad in the local papers. His young daughters, Jessie and Martha, get involved too, as does wife, Anna. Indeed there could be a dynasty in the making, with 11-year-old Martha already a mistress of the secateurs and often recruiting a few of her pals for the exercise.

Bowen keeps an eye on quality with a dose of sorting post-picking. “They know what’s ripe,” he says of his volunteers.

Cellar at the centre

Time to taste: Pebblebed Cellar by the Quay in Topsham

But the point of difference I love most is Bowen’s decision to place his “cellar door” in the centre of Topsham – “like in Chablis and St Emilion” he says – rather than on the edge of town where the vineyards are. So, yes, there are vineyard tours twice a week, but his main way of “meeting the public” is in the evenings, when he regularly gets 50 or so diners and imbibers to the whitewashed former warehouse near the Quay in Tophsham.

Formerly an environmental hydrogeologist, postings had taken Bowen all over the world before returning to Devon with his young family. Today, he likes the mix of being out in the field with the evening’s chat in the Cellar.

As well as his own, there’s other local drinks, including wines from Sharpham, Manstree and Yearlstone Vineyards, plus a few dozen international wines from his neighbour and Cellar collaborator, wine, food and travel writer turned wine importer, Marc Millon, whose company Vino specialises in small Italian producers.

All coming up rosés

Stick with the pink: "it's what we can do"

Long before it became fashionable, Bowen’s been in the pink. “I like pink myself,” he says, having admitted that part of his initial inspiration came from holidays spent sipping rosé in the hills of Provence. “I just feel that this is what we can do,” he says of rosé in the UK. His is made from the common UK bedfellows, Seyval Blanc and Rondo, with some made from Pinot Noir due to join from 2010. “You’ve got to focus on what you can do best.”

So what of his ordeal in the Dragons’ Den? “I was in there for two-and-three-quarter hours,” says Bowen. “I’ve never known Geoff stumped for words,” said Pebblebed Vineyard manager, Nigel Cox, of the moment where silence reigned. “Actually it was mid-way through the pitch”, said Bowen, not the beginning as portrayed on the programme.

But with fortitude, Bowen persisted, convincing leisure magnate Duncan Bannatyne to come on board with a £60K investment in return for 40% equity to seed-fund the next stage of Pebblebed’s development. Although the exact mechanism is to be worked out, the key is to enable others to be a part of the expansion. “What people really want is the involvement,” says Bowen. “Even if they only come down for half-an-hour and dig in two vines.”

Bannatyne and his family have already visited – he recently added Charlton House hotel in nearby Shepton Mallett to his portfolio of leisure properties – and this encounter will be shown in an update to be screened in August.

In the Den: see Geoff do battle here.
Summer 2010 tours: Thurs, 4.30pm; Sat, 11am; reservation essential
Cellar: see web, Wed–Sat, 5.30-9.30pm; Sat, 11am–2pm