Herefordshire: Vineyards, Black and White Villages and Good Pubs
Highly scenic, beautiful, rich in history and folklore, verdant and fertile, sparsely populated and filled with impressive villages and farms… I could be talking about the West Country peninsula, but on this occasion I’m pointing north to large and thoroughly lovely Herefordshire.
A Beautiful Farming County
What a wonderful county it is. There are of course differences, the main one being that the West Country “proper”, as I call it, has a fabulous coastline. But what Herefordshire lacks in beaches, it makes up for in the grandeur of its countryside and the sheer scale of its agricultural output.
Does the latter make it a good place to visit? Well, yes, I think it does. I spent a couple of days up there last week and was hugely impressed by what I saw. I’d say the county has even more orchards than Devon or Somerset and it also produces impressive crops of things like blackcurrants and hops. And I know for a fact there are some really impressive vineyards sheltering in the lee of the Welsh mountains, because I was taken on a tour of three of them.
Moreover, it pays to venture across the Bristol Channel every now and then to see what the neighbours are up to. What immediately strikes you about Herefordshire is the scale of the crop-growing rather than livestock-rearing. You trade our sea views for the brooding mass of the Black Mountains to the west and the ridge of the Malverns to the east, with wide and fertile valleys tucked in between.
Exploring Herefordshire's Black and White Villages
Our base was the White Heron Estate, located in the north-west of the county between Lyonshall and Kington. This is what could be called “back and white country” - north-west Herefordshire is famed for what must be the finest concentration of timber-framed architecture anywhere in Britain. The “black and white villages” are now joined by the Black and White Trail - a 40-mile circular loop linking places that look less like modern communities and more like medieval film sets.
Take Weobley (pronounced Web-lee) - its broad main street is lined with 15th- and 16th-century cruck houses leaning at impossible angles, built when local oak was plentiful and English wool paid the bills. A few miles north sits Pembridge, complete with an open-sided 16th-century market hall and a peculiar, detached church belfry that looks like a timber fortress. Then there’s Eardisland, where blackened oak-and-plaster cottages sit mirrored in the millpond waters of the River Arrow.
I was impressed by their postcard good-looks, but also by the fact that they’d survived at all. In many other regions these timber-framed buildings were demolished or clad in brick when architectural fashions changed. Here, tucked away along the Welsh Marches, agricultural isolation kept them intact. The stark black-and-white frontages are actually a Victorian modification - they believed tarring the beams helped preserve the wood and highlight the craftsmanship against lime-wash. But what’s really impressive is that the underlying skeleton of unseasoned green oak has stood firm for five centuries. They remain working, lived-in places with good pubs, yet with that sense of ancient permanence.
Staying at White Heron Estate
Our base, however, was out in the countryside - in one of the comfortable holiday cottages on the handsome and highly productive White Heron Estate. A lovely little cottage situated right beside a large and immaculate vineyard.
Indeed, the main reason for our visit was to join a newly devised day-tour linking three distinct producers across the county. And a highly enjoyable, interesting and sensible setup it is too. Rather than tackling narrow country lanes and arguing over who’s going to be driver for the day, a minibus is laid on to collect small groups directly from the estate.
Sensible… because there is quite a lot of wine sampling to be done over the next six hours.
Frome Valley Vineyard
Our first port of call was Frome Valley Vineyard, located towards Paunton and Bishops Frome. Viticulture might seem like a recent British success story, but the vines were first planted here back in 1990 by a UK pioneer. Today it is run by the Falconer family, who believe in doing things properly and sustainably - the rows of vines are pruned entirely by hand and, unusually, thick fleeces of sheep’s wool are laid around the base of each plant to suppress the weeds and help with moisture retention. It seems to work remarkably well - so too, apparently, does the special carbonised worm-cast liquor which is used to build up root health.
Walking the rows with the people who actually tend the vines brings home the sheer manual graft involved. Afterwards, we sat down to a tasting flight of classic cool-climate varieties - Bacchus, Madeleine Angevine, Huxelrebe, and Reichensteiner - all of which were superb. Because this is prime orchard country, the family also poured us a glass of their own superb perry, served alongside some mid-morning charcuterie and local snacks. It was an impressive start to the day.
1276 Wines Near Ledbury
From there, we were taken south towards Ledbury to 1276 Wines - based on a hillside site with a remarkable backstory. The name comes from the year vines were first recorded on that exact slope, nearly 750 years ago. The modern commercial vineyard was established in 2007 and has since picked up international awards for its still, sparkling, and even ice wines.
We were taken behind the scenes into the large winery, tasting wine directly from the tanks while discussing the mechanics of cool-climate fermentation. Lunch followed, in the form of a delightful ploughman’s that contained an array of really good local Herefordshire ingredients, matched of course, with tastings of their own award-winning wines. As anyone who has done it will know, it is hard to beat drinking wine made 50 yards from the table you are sitting at.
Back to White Heron Estate
By mid-afternoon, the minibus had returned us to our base at White Heron for the third stop. The estate covers some 700 acres and has been farmed by four generations of the same family, marking its 150th anniversary in 2026. While they make an excellent English sparkling wine from Seyval Blanc, Madeleine Angevine, and Reichensteiner, their signature crop is blackcurrants, which have grown here since 1876. Most of the crop goes to make Ribena, but they also creator British Cassis, a rich blackcurrant liqueur that has won awards worldwide.
We were given e-bikes for a guided ride across the farm. Electric assistance makes short work of the gradients, and riding between the blackcurrant fields, woods, and vineyard rows gives you a far better sense of the scale of the operation than peering out of a car window.
The day ended with what they call ‘vine dining’ - an open-air, seasonal supper served at a truly enormous table made from a single sheet of estate oak, located in a canvas pavilion just above the vineyard. The cooking (brought in for the occasion from a local delicatessen) relies entirely on seasonal, local ingredients, paired with their own sparkling wine and cassis. It was relaxed, well run, delicious and hugely enjoyable.
One thing that impressed me about the whole setup was the lack of commercial pushiness or sales talk. You spend the day with the growers and winemakers who know their green agrarian worlds inside out. For anyone fancying a short break, White Heron Estate packages the tour with a two-night midweek cottage stay and a late checkout, leaving plenty of time to use the on-site pool, hot tub, sauna, or padel and squash courts, or simply explore the surrounding border villages.
Herefordshire for Wine, Farming and Food
The West Country will always be home to this particular bit of newspaper real-estate, but if you appreciate working landscapes, good farming, and well-made English wines, ciders and perrys, then I am happy to report that Herefordshire is well worth a look.
Fact File
The Tour: The vineyard tour runs for groups of up to 15, with travel by private minibus from White Heron Estate. Midweek packages include a two-night cottage stay, late check-out, and access to leisure facilities including pool, hot tub, sauna, padel, and e-bikes. Weekend stays are also available.
Food & Drink: All meals, tastings, and the evening vineyard dinner are locally sourced. Dietary requirements are catered for if noted at booking.
Bookings: Reservations for both the vineyard tour and accommodation are handled via whiteheronestate.com.
The Vineyards
White Heron Estate: Lyonshall, Herefordshire HR5 3JA. Web: www.whiteheronestate.com
Frome Valley Vineyard: Paunton, Bishops Frome, Herefordshire. Web: www.fromevalleyvineyard.co.uk
1276 Wines: Near Ledbury, Herefordshire. Web: www.1276.wine
Sidebar - Good Pubs
And another thing when discussing the difference between rural Herefordshire and the country areas of the South West… I visited a couple of excellent pubs during my stay.
So what? There are good pubs everywhere. And of course there are, but I am talking about the kind of pubs I used to visit when I first started working for newspapers over 50 years ago.
By which I mean: wonderful community places which are not restaurants resting under a pub sign, but institutions where - above and beyond anything else - people can enjoy a pint and a chat.
Places where you can get food, but not at the cost of everything else. How many times recently have I been into West Country pubs of an early evening only to be confronted with wall-to-wall reserved signs on every single table? Fair enough - these places have to make a living… But…
Now, the name Ye Olde Tavern might not do much instil confidence, I grant you - but the wonderful pub of that name in Kington, in north-west Herefordshire, deserves a mention precisely because it is one of those very warm and human places. I loved this tiny pub which I found at the end of a long suburban street - it felt like I’d jumped into a time machine and gone back half a century. Slate floors, snug little bars, men playing chess in a back-room, really good real ales, the hum of chatter and laughter… What’s not to like?
The super-friendly lady behind the bar was proud to show me around and she rattled off the names of half a dozen similar ale houses in the vicinity.
