In 2005 the International Wine Challenge awarded a Gold medal for the 2001 Camel Valley Cornwall Brut. Bob also won several Gold medals for tourism and in 2006 was awarded the Cornwall Tourist Board Gold Medal for outstanding services to tourism which was won by Rick Stein the year before. The vineyard was also awarded a Gold Medal in the South West Business Challenge for ‘creating wealth in the rural community’

 

The vineyard has grown from the original 2 ha to 7 ha with new plantings of Pinot noir, Dornfelder and Bacchus but the removal of the Triomphe. The winery, the first in the UK to be built with grant-aid from EU funds, soon grew to a 200,000 litre capacity with the arrival, into the business, of the next generation, son Sam Lindo in 2002. Sam, a maths graduate from the University of Bath, installed a cooling system for fermentations and in 2005 Camel Valley became the first UK winery to use Stelvin screw caps for the still wines. Sam had previously done a spell at Kim Crawford’s winery in New Zealand.

Camel Valley has concentrated on winning top awards and feature regularly in everything from the IWC, Decanter and the IWSC and even the Japanese Wine Challenge. Currently, Sam Lindo is the 2007 UKVA Winemaker of the Year and he won three Gold Medals in the 2007 UKVA competition with the top 3 sparkling wines. Sam also won the coveted Gore-Browne and Vintner’s trophies, another IWC Silver and topped the Decanter awards with his Bacchusstill wine. Their wines have received praise in the past from several noted wine writers: Jancis Robinson said on BBC’s Today programme that she was ‘very impressed’ with the 1995 Red and Tom Stevenson so liked their Camel Valley Brut, that after a tasting ‘he and his wife - unusually - drank the whole bottle’.

  

 

The Camel Valley wine range is over 50% bottle fermented and includes a Seyval blanc blend, Pinot noir blanc de noir and Pinot noir rosé. Bob and Sam very much try to be distinctive with a fruit forward style and are definitely not trying to make a Champagne substitute. This style works very well with Camel Valley retaining the top UK sparkling wine trophy for the second year running. The winery supplies 150 trade outlets including Rick Stein’s restaurant empire and Waitrose and welcomes over 20,000 visitors a year to the winery.