25/10/2026
Meet the team | Martyn & Helen 🍇
We’ve had lots of new followers this season, so here’s a little reintroduction to the faces behind Nine Oaks Vineyard:
We’re a husband and wife team with three mini helpers coming along for the journey!
Martyn spent ten years in the British Army and worked in sustainability. I was born and brought up in Hothfield, then moved away for uni and later with Martyn while he was in the army, to Essex and Kenya.
The land came into my family in the 90s, when my parents wanted to preserve their view and conserve the area as countryside, as it was at risk of being developed. They rented it back to the sheep farmer for decades before we made changes.
The vineyard itself was Martyn’s idea, but we’d grown grapes before and long had grapes growing at my family home, knowing Kent was a great location for w**e.
We came back from Kenya in February 2020 to ‘put down roots’ (pun intended) and went straight into Covid. Planting our first Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that May was a wonderful experience for us and our (then) two tiny people and we spent hours on site watching everything take shape.
We both set out to educate ourselves on w**e and viticulture. Martyn went further than me, but I loved doing my WSET Level 2 at Chapel Down.
We’ve been involved in every decision about our w**es and branding from the start, recruiting an amazing local designer to bring it to life. We started with two still w**es in 2023, and now seeing a range of seven now is amazing.
Six harvests later, we’re looking after 15,000 vines and this year picked our biggest crop yet. It’s still very much family-run, with an amazing group of volunteers helping every harvest.
I love meeting people through the vineyard, at our weekly tours and tastings or at markets (especially at Christmas!), and I never get tired of telling the story. If you see us, come and say hello 👋
Helen
