On an unassuming pocket of land between Fowey and Polkerris, the kind of place you could almost miss if you didn’t know to look, Trenant Farm is being coaxed back into life one field, one building and one bottle at a time. This is the home of Saints Way Wines, Graham’s deeply personal Cornish venture, shaped by spring water, restored land and the kind of patience that can’t be hurried.

When I arranged to meet Graham, he suggested I bring a few people along for the tour, so I gathered a handful of Fowey friends and we made an afternoon of it. Usually, when I’m interviewing someone, I’m the one asking the questions. This time, my guests did much of the work for me, asking the brilliant, curious questions that opened up stories I might never have thought to reach for. What followed was less of an interview and more like a wonderfully informal couple of hours in the Cider Barn: part tasting, part tour and part open conversation, ranging from grape varieties, apple orchards and global vineyards to General Pinochet, du Maurier’s The King’s General and the streams that run all the way down to Polridmouth.

Rooted in Polkerris

Graham was born in Polkerris and spent his early years there before leaving Cornwall to build a business and travel the world. Those years away didn’t loosen his connection to Fowey; if anything, they seem to have sharpened it. He returned with the perspective of someone who has done business all over the world yet was still drawn back to this particular part of the Cornish coast.

Trenant Farm sits along the ancient Saints Way, on land Graham speaks of with unmistakable attachment. Securing it took years. Restoring it has taken longer still. Buildings that had slipped close to dereliction have been carefully brought back into use, while fields and orchards are being tended again after a long period of neglect.

A wine shaped by water, land and patience

Ask Graham what gives the wines their character, and he doesn’t begin with terroir or technique. He talks first about water. Trenant has its own spring, and the farm is largely self-sustaining, drawing on the natural resources of the site rather than relying on heavy external inputs. To him, the flavour in the glass is part of a wider system: water, soil, weather, wildlife and careful human stewardship all working together.

Graham describes the production as free from chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers. Grass is managed naturally, helped by the farm’s geese, which graze through the orchard and vineyard while adding their own fertilisation as they go. It is both practical and rather wonderful: a feathered workforce contributing to a low-intervention approach that suits the land as much as it suits Graham’s philosophy.

Graham doesn’t profess to be a wine expert. In fact, quite the opposite. But he’s approached the project with real curiosity and care. He has a brilliant winemaker working with him, and he’s spent a lot of time visiting and researching vineyards around the world, absorbing different climates, methods and attitudes before applying those lessons at Trenant. The result isn’t an imitation of somewhere else, but a business taking shape around what this Cornish site can offer.