Is Wine the next future career for Generation Alpha? Rachel explains why the world of wine has it all.

I heard Rachel Lee on The Wine Blast Podcast, talking about how pleasurable it is to share a glass of wine with friends. I got in touch and voila, we made this episode together. Her journey began high up in the Pyrenees on a family holiday with clouds and a goat for company.

This is a story about how the world of wine could offer an exciting opportunity for the next generation (Generation Alpha). We explore what a typical day looks like and the fun along the way.

If you love to travel, share soul stories, enjoy tasting great food and wine, then this is the episode for you. 

In the midst of chatting with Rachel over the last few weeks, Cobble Hill Wine, where Rachel is the Head Winemaker there, won the IEWA 2026  Best Still White Wine award for their 2025 Bacchus. Huge congratulations to Rachel, Emma Rice (Consultant Wine Maker) and the whole team at Cobble Hill. I'm looking forward to trying this. I'm a huge fan of Bacchus!!

I'm launching this episode as the Norwich Wine Week begins. There's an app to download and lots of events to attend.

So, sit back, grab yourself a glass of something delicious and let's get amongst The Wild Vines.

Thanks to Cobble Hill Wine and to Rachel Lee: Head Winemaker at Cobble Hill Wine.

Music by Moby Gratis. https://mobygratis.com/

Links to more information:

https://www.cobblehillnorfolk.com/our-story

https://www.wsetglobal.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Wild Vines, Climate Wine and Everything Between. I'm your host, Victoria Wilkin, and in this episode I'm chatting with Rachel Lee, Head Winemaker of Cobble Hill Wine, who were thrilled to announce that their backers 2025 has just won Best White Wine of the Year at the IEWA Awards, the Independent English Wine Awards. So congratulations to the whole team. That's such exciting news.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

So I was so thrilled about a week or two ago now to discover that the 2025 Bahakus, which was the first wine I made here and first wine I made as head winemaker, won Best White and Gold Medal at the IEWA, the Independent English Wine Awards. So it was amazing just to have that reassurance that I'm on the right track. And I couldn't have done any of it without Emma, our consultant winemaker, Emma Rice. She's so talented, she's so reassuring, and she really knows her stuff. So yeah, I don't know what I'd do without her. And she just, as I said, keeps me on the right track and makes sure I'm doing everything correctly. So yeah, I really have her to thank for that. And it's just so exciting and hopefully a sign of things to come. My name is Rachel Lee. I am 25 years old.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

I first heard Rachel talking on the Wine Blast podcast. She had called in to the show to say that she thought it would be a great idea to create an episode on the relationship between young people and the understanding of how exciting the world wine could be. This is a subject that I'm fascinated with, so I thought, well, let's do the episode ourselves. I had three bits of information. I had Rachel, Norfolk, and Winemaker, and that was it. And I tracked her down to Cobble Hill Vineyard. In fact, I struck lucky. I only asked one vineyard and she was head winemaker there. So this episode is about Rachel's story interwine. And the links are that she's based in Norfolk and I'm based in Norfolk. And I do want to give a shout out to the Norwich Wine Week that's happening this week, too. The launch party is obviously there's lots of events going on. So if you're in Norwich, Norfolk, do get along to the Norwich Wine Week where you can have tastings and food pairings and find out more about what's happening in the local community. So here's Rachel Lee talking about her journey into wine.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

My wine journey started quite a long time ago. I remember um sitting around the table with my my granddad talking about wine, my dad's dad, um, and I always thought it was all so grown up, far too um complicated for my for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

The wine industry is essentially working in agriculture, and that's not always glamorous.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Spiders the size of your hand. It was hard work, but I came face to face with kangaroos and removing nets that were placed down on over the vines to stop birds getting in. And I was um lifting them up, so it was the first person that had been in the vines for a long time. So you can imagine the spiderwebs that were there.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So here's Rachel talking about her baptism by fire experience of working in wine.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Coming into a role of head winemaker, I was very overwhelmed at first, and I remember my friend Abbey telling me, Rachel, if you don't feel underwater when you first started a job, you're going to be bored in six months. So it's very important that you feel overwhelmed. So that helped me a lot.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

This podcast is about how climate change is impacting the vineyards and also the industry as a whole. And the questions that I wanted to ask Rachel were how is climate change impacting where you work currently in Norfolk?

SPEAKER_02 4:01

We see the effects and the consequences of it everywhere. I mean, when I even when I was studying in Portugal, the temperature was so high. People are adapting the dates that they harvest, they're changing the grape varieties, they're changing the clones, they're changing the time of the year that they remove leaves and the type of leaves they remove. There's a lot of science behind it and it's really reassuring. But a lot of the problem is it's climate disorder. You know, if the vine is seeing above 10 degrees for weeks and weeks on end, it's going to think, right, well, spring's coming. So, you know, that's time for bud bursts, let's go. And then we get a late frost, which we had in the last couple of weeks, and we've really been hit bad in England. And the reason we've been hit so bad is because the vines were all awake and the buds had burst, and the frosts were that late that they were at the most vulnerable stage of the of the grapevines annual cycle. I mean, they're incredibly hardy things, but there are parts of the year that they are so fragile, and Budburst is one. And so, you know, we've got we know of people around the UK that have lost their entire crop, and it's a tragedy because you do so much work. So I'd say that's probably the biggest challenge we're facing at the moment. Another one is the some some vineyards, quite a lot of vineyards around the UK have an overs oversupply of wine from bulk years like 2023, we got in too much yield. And so now we're having to think differently about the way our wine is sold. If we've got newer wine that we are so excited about, we want to get out there. But um but a lot of vineyards have stock that they also need to sell, and that you know, and people are being really creative about it. Part of that that I really care about at the moment is the thought of what's going in into and the production of it in terms of you know, how sustainable is your production of wine. Can you keep this going forever on a big uh you know, on a bigger picture? I've been so so interested to learn about the way that farmers are protecting their soil and the way that they are thinking, okay, this soil's been here for hundreds of years. Now we've damaged it to a point that it's we something needs to be done. How can we protect the soil? I mean, all these people are suddenly interested in soil, who would have thought? And and it's really interesting. It sounds like something someone would have a weird obsession with, and I think that I'm one of those people now. So yeah, I something that I really care about at the moment, can't believe I ever thought I'd say this, is um soil and dirt and the difference between the two. One important misunderstanding that I think might be present in the consumer sphere about wine and climate change is that climate change enables different grapes to grow in the same place. For example, we are looking at for for example, Provence is known for its very blush, light, dry rose. Um Provence actually makes beautiful red wines because it's so hot there and it is getting hotter. And but it's just not really marketable because Provence is rose, and that's what we know. And so if I could, you know, wave a magic wand and uh remove some of the tradition that has come with some geographical um regions, which was there, they were there for good reason, and they've earned the place on you know on the label of a wine bottle to indicate a sign of quality. But that can still remain with different grape varieties and different styles of wine. And so if the public were to accept a different style of wine in their their old favourite uh wine-growing regions, that could be a great, great opportunity for the adaptation to climate change if the market is also open to changing what they know about I don't know, Montalcino or Bordeaux or um Napa Valley, you know, wherever it may be, if the general public i is open to learning a bit more and accepting that, yeah, okay, we can also have like a really nice deep red wine from Provence and buy that worldwide and enjoy it, then Provence will be able to and I'm using Provence as an example now, but Provence will be able to produce wine um that is according to their climate, their microclimate. And that would that's a that's a great thing. My interest really started on a family holiday, and we used to go quite a lot and we'd drive through the most rural parts of Spain. I have very vivid memories of my dad driving through the Pyrenees and the man drover. We were a big family, five kids, three dogs, two adults. So it was a packed fan. We were on these teeny tiny roads, and I remember at one point just looking over the edge, and there was just clouds. Um, apart from a goat that was standing on the edge of the road. Later in 2019, before university, I had applied to Newcastle to do history and politics and bought a ticket to Australia for a gap year. And we r ran out of money completely at one point, and I just literally looked on Google Maps and and searched vineyards, and I found Yabby Lake Vineyard, and it was purely by coincidence that I called and it was harvest time coming up in about a month's time. So that ended up with us in Yabby Lake Vineyard in Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne for a couple of months in sort of 38 degree heat. And one day a kangaroo little baby just jumped up to me to the point that I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to square up to this thing, and it just stopped about a metre away and looked at me. I was I couldn't believe it, and it jumped away under the vines. So that was my first glimpse at how much nature is in a wine harvesting binaries. And it was the first time I'd I'd done real farm work, really. So, you know, in the interview I didn't have much to say really, but she Emma mentioned that um it would be handy if I had a tractor licence. So I used this time as well to go and get a tractor licence and telehandler and forklift. Then started the harvest at Huttingly, and it was just the same atmosphere came back, even on the opposite side of the world. You're harvesting the fruits of your labour that you've had all year. And I was with people much older than me who were really excited about wine. So I was 20 years old at the time, sitting round the table at a harvest lunch, harvest dinner. You know, humans uh beings need to share food and wine with people, basically, at Coxson and Coxswain in Berwick, which was just the I am so uh obsessed with my bosses that I still consider my bosses there, um, Sarah and Sid, they're up in Berwick upon Tweed. And they've just created this atmosphere that just, you know, mirrored that exactly what I was what I'm what I've been talking about. They want to get wine from winemakers with stories that they've shared with them from small producers, and they put so much trust in me, and it really demonstrated for me that if you do put trust in someone, then that makes people shine. That really helped me in my career. So I then became a bit of a buyer for them when I was on my future master's degree around Europe, and I would buy wine and and um take it back to England for the wine bar. So um, if anyone is in Berger on tweeted, you've got to go to Cox and Cox and Best Wine Bar in the Northeast. I then came back and did my final year of university. I had the most amazing group of people that I was living with that I'm still very, very close with, and we would always share dinner time, if not the dinner. And there was something like nine of us in the house at one point. It was in this freezing cold house in Newcastle. There was mould everywhere, it was cold, there was a there was a rat. Just one, I I think, but it was a big one and it kept coming back. So we all looked out for each other, and then this last year of university really showed me the beauty of female friendship, basically, and it changed my life. I at the end of that year I wanted to get on the wine scene. So I applied to a master's degree with the University Université, L'École Supérieure d'Aquiculture, Angers. So this is in the Loire Valley in Angers. I say in Angers, but actually the course was two years long, and we all met our classmates in Portugal for the first four months, and then in Italy for four months um in Piacenza. Um then we went to France for a year to do an apprenticeship. So so in Portugal I met oh, it was an absolute manic journey to Portugal. I drove from Bordeaux uh all through the night. It took me 13 hours, and again with the I picked up a girl, a Gat who was in my courts who I'd never met before, obviously, and we drove together. Um apart from my car had the steering wheel on the wrong side for her. So I did all the driving, so and it was like um the weather was like the seven plagues. It was they threw everything it could at me as I drove through Spain. We arrived in Villarreal where our university UTAD was, and then we went to start our internships, which was a harvest. So I met my friend Fortulos, and we spent the next three weeks working about 16 hours a day, every day together. So needless to say, we got to know each other very well. We were in Quinta da Faichka in Portugal, under a winemaker, Hugo Linton, who's so talented and who we owe so much to, because we just had the best time. And like I've been saying the entire time, we were always sat around the table at lunch and dinner, always, always, and we had a lot of time set aside. You know, despite the 16-hour days, we had that time set aside to sit down and switch off and enjoy and drink as well. So this is just it was just a fantastic experience. It was, I mean, I was delirious for most of it, deliriously tired or tipsy, um, one or the other. But I learned so much. We wrote, we had a book full of stuff that we learned from Hugo, and he's incredibly talented. His wines are fantastic, and I'm I'm looking at a bottle right now. Um and yeah, so this was uh master's degree. We studied winemaking in Portugal, viticulture from Italy, and then economics and marketing, and we were under an apprenticeship in France. So that is how I got into wine. Um in the middle of my apprenticeship in France, I saw a job advertisement for a winemaker in Norfolk, and that's how I ended up here.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

How can the wine industry attract the younger adult generation coming through to actually consider working in wine as a viable career choice? One of the reasons that young people may not be getting into the wine industry as a career option is possibly because of the growing trend towards being sober curious. Looking at the stats on drinkers between the ages of 18 to 39, this age bracket is actually drinking less. And we do see a decrease in the stats from 26% in 2010 to 37% currently. Now, obviously, this is a big decrease, and this is going to have an impact on wine sales, of course. But there is some innovative activity also happening, so it's not a straightforward picture, and perhaps the younger generation are actually turning towards lighter styles of wines with lower ABV and also sparkling wines as well. So it's quite mixed. Now, according to the Wine Market Council 2025, the US Wine Consumer Benchmark segmentation survey actually shows that Gen Z, the percentage of wine drinkers actually climbed from 9% to 14% in the last two years. And they are drinking wine more frequently than before. So there's possibly a bit of a trend shift happening. Other possible reasons for why Gen Zs might be drinking less is this idea of having a mental health focus and this optimisation trend as well. So there are lots of other reasons, cost of living, and according to Drinkerware, half of young adults are actually choosing no and low alcohol. So are the Gen Z the more sober generation? So as of 2026, we have Generation Alpha and currently they're aged between 1 and 16, so clearly not in the drinking age bracket. However, we'll be interesting to see how this generation actually responds to wine as a possible career option. So although Generation Alpha are the youngest generation, by the end of the 2020s they're going to be moving into adulthood and the workforce. And so planning ahead, it's quite an exciting and interesting time to think about how we can start to engage and talk about the wine industry as a possible career and what it can offer you.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

And now being a winemaker in a small winery is one of the most diverse jobs that exist. I think also I'm lucky because I live on a farm here, so once a month or so I'm helping with cows or something on the farm as well. Just in case, you know, there's not enough in the wine world. As a winemaker, right now I'm in the vines, but I'm also organising things inside the winery. So we're at the stage now where everything is bottled, apart from a couple of things that we've got in tank and in barrel, so I'm monitoring the process of that, and we're designing labels. I've just been down to London for the London Wine Fair. We went with our Piaggio Appay, a big scooter with uh Cobble Hill branding on it, and we take that around the place, and we've just been down to the Warwickshire for Jeremy Clarkson's um farm fest where we were selling wine, and then I'm back on the vineyard again, and it's you know, on Friday we've got a tapaz evening where everyone's going to have a tapaz meal here at the winery, and you have to wear so many hats, and you know, sometimes I'm in a tank all day cleaning. And and then I'm in a in black tie down in London in the next week. So it's there is something for everyone, and even if it's sales and marketing, London is this historical wine market. We're so good at selling wine, and we are we we know wine in England. And that's what's been so nice about the support for English wine and Norfolk wine especially. I have the Holt Market every s every the first Sunday of every month, and people are really excited to support Norfolk wine, and they're thrilled that it's getting better and better. I mean our vineyard is on a is a 3.6 hectare plot of land on a south-facing slope. We get a lot of sun, and the ground is very white from the chalk, so it's quite hot in there. It's a bit like standing with a mirror on the ground on a hot day. Um, but it gives that great the grapes that extra bit of heat that they need to fully ripen and to be protected from frost, which we have had um a scare this year. So I would say the winemaking world, I've learnt so much about myself. I mean, where do I begin? Physical strength that you need to be yanking around all these pumps and vines all day. You you feel strong. If a little bit sore at the end of the day, outside all day, you you've got the sun in your face, on on your skin, you are at the mercy of the elements, but you finished the day and you've been outside all day, and I'm not sure that a lot of people can say that. And and now I look back, and I was such an amateur, like coming into this role, and I've learned so much just in seven months, and I and I think the same thing about my apprenticeship. When I was at the end of my apprenticeship, I was looking back. I thought, God, I didn't know anything at the beginning. And now look at how much I've learned. And it's the same here every every as every month goes by. Most of all I've learnt that I find a way to figure out something, that everything is figure outable, especially in winemaking. I mean, you have to be a mechanic, an electrician, a salesperson, you have to be a farmer and a tractor driver, and a mathematician, um, a chemist, an accountant. There's just nothing like it. And I think if you're someone that's that likes To wear many hats, and if you're someone that likes a lot of subjects and likes to be organised but also has a bit of a wild side and loves to be connected to nature, um it's just so so balanced. Um yes, your back hurts when you're doing bud removal in the vines and you're on the ten thousand of twelve thousand vine. Um yes, I won't lie. But that physical aspect of it to be tired at the end of the day, and you've been in the sun all day is um yeah, is unmatched. And as I said, everything that I feel about wine, I feel that wine represents, adds to this urging of me for young people to go into the wine world.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Loneliness is a deep and pervasive problem for many people right now. There's a need for connection, and this connection is about feeling companionship and being included, sharing stories over a glass of wine with friends.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

And particularly in England, there are so many women supporting other women. I've we recently came back from an AGM for Wine GB East, and there are so many excited women helping each other. We also are the founder of Between the Vines magazine, one of the founders, and they host uh quarterly, and the support that everyone has for each other there, they're they're not necessarily winemakers, some of them are, some of them are restaurants or farmers, and there's so much love and excitement about the atmosphere of of wine, and that's what's shared in these kind of meetings. So you're never going to be lonely. It's a very small world in the world of wine in England, but everyone is so amazingly supportive of each other, and the winemaker friends that I made abroad are so thrilled to share part of their network to welcome me to visit, but also visit here. And then in the second year of my master's degree, we did an apprenticeship in the Loire Valley in France. I actually had to learn French for that position, uh, which was tough. I was learning words like ladder and and hose pipe before, you know, how was your day in French. We were doing some natural wines, we were doing we were incorporating some biodynamics into the winemaking. It was in a place called Sagesse de Sol, which means wisdom of the soil. So I stayed there on site. Other apprentice winemakers can definitely relate to lots of cleaning, getting inside and outside um tanks. And when I came here to as a head winemaker, it was really exciting to do that step up. But it meant obviously I was then responsible for everything. So I then had to make winemaking decisions. So with the help of my consultant winemaker, Emma Rice, who's I had the pleasure to work with in Hattingley in 2020, who actually made me want to be a woman winemaker in England. And she's she's just inspired me all the way through, and she helps me so much. I don't know what I would do without her here. But we so together we sort of she helped me get through harvest and follow the fermentation of the wine in the tanks and understand what style we wanted to do with them. So it was the winery before the vineyard here, really. So I'm currently living in a place called High House Farm. It's where is the home of Cobble Hill Vineyard, Cobble Hill Winery, and it's between Docking and Stanhoe, which only people from North Norfolk will know where it is. It's about ten minutes from the North Norfolk coast, Brancaster, Holcombe, Holcombe Hall, got wells next to sea. It's a really, really beautiful area. I remember when I came for my interview in May last year, I uh I noticed how beautiful it was. And here I am ahead of wine, so so I keep an eye on all the wine and put it through harvest and fermentation and keep it bubbling along and uh just take care of the cellar basically, but also do all the vine work as well. So pruning, tying down, butter removal, tucking in, um delafing, and eventually the harvest, which will be done partly by machine as well. What do I want people to say about my contribution to the wine industry? That's a really good question. I hope that people will say my contribution would be to bring back the reason why we made it in the first place. Um sharing. And sharing stories and sharing food and sharing drink. Soul sharing of stories and um and tales and lessons. And if I was sitting with all my friends right now, at any one moment, uh I would choose a wine with a story, and maybe even I'd share like a long period of time with him. Like, for example, Hugo in Portugal, I've got some of his wine here, and if it was a really special occasion, I would open that and I'd talk about Hugo and I'd talk about my time in the Kinder da Faiska, I'd talk about my time in Portugal and how I found the Portuguese the most welcoming people to strangers that I've ever met in my life. And um, yeah, I'm gonna have to say Hugo Linton's Coliseo wine uh red because there's just so much memory in there. And it'd be a pleasure to share more wine stories and to meet new people.com. And yeah, that would be a pleasure to hear from you, to hear if you heard this podcast, and if you want to come and visit the winery anytime, I'd love to show you around and let you taste some of the wine. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Thank you so much to Rachel Lee for sharing her story and coming on the podcast. So Rachel was a caller for Wine Blast, and I also have a caller for World Vines, so we're going to listen to our first caller sharing her experience of her local vineyards in the south-east of England. This is Victoria.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

One in particular I went to the other day was Charles Palmer in Winchelsea and tried a few of their wines. Their chardonnay, in particular, is very fresh and clean and crisp, and their equivalent to their champagne is delicious, very Apolline citrus. Highly recommended, and Chapel Down, their rose is really light and fruity. I believe that Prince William and Kate had it for their wedding.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

If you are interested in a career in wine, there are some colleges offering wine industry qualifications. So, for instance, one route could be the Wine and Spirit Education Trust called W S E T. This would train you up to have a good understanding of wine, be able to work as a smellier in a restaurant where you would recommend wine pairings with food, or even to work in a vineyard to understand about the vine cycle. But also there are places like Plumpton College. I'm not have no affiliation with them. I'm sure that there are other ones as well that offer wine courses. So whether you want to be a winemaker, whether you want to work in the vineyard, there are courses available, or there are apprenticeships or work experience. Find out where your local vineyards are. Thanks for listening. And next time we're going to be talking to a local wine shop owner and hearing about his story and how he got into working in the wine world. You've been listening to Wild Vines, Climate, Wine, and Everything Between. If you want to share your views of how climate is impacting our wine industry, then do get in contact. You can contact me via Victoria's Vine Secrets on Instagram or do send me a message on giving space to coaching dot co dot uk. That's Victoria at giving space to coaching dot co dot uk. See you next time.