ARK Wines

Contact page states closed Sun/Mon/Tue; homepage separately states Tue-Sat, so treated the contact page (more explicit about closed days) as authoritative. No appointment needed for shop visits within hours; site says they may still be able to see you outside hours if contacted by email.

Opening hours can change for private events - it's always worth checking the vineyard's website before you visit.

What's the vibe?

ARK Wines sits at Mount Farm, an old chicken farm in the Stour Valley near Sudbury that Hans and Kristin Engström found in 2018 and turned into a vineyard with their daughter Amanda, who trained at Plumpton College. It's a small, hands-on operation rather than a polished visitor attraction: 30 acres and an on-site winery. If you like wine made with as little intervention as possible, this is one of the more experimental producers in Suffolk.

The shop is open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, with no need to book ahead. Outside those hours, ARK Wines says it may still be able to see you if you get in touch by email first.

For an actual look at the vineyard and winery, book onto Root & Ritual, a guided workshop that includes an introduction to both and the story behind the wines. ARK Wines also hosts occasional Sunday Lunches, family-style meals paired with its wines and prepared using local ingredients, from £30 to £38 a head.

Every wine here is unfiltered and unfined, fermented with wild yeast and made without added sulphites, the same low-intervention approach used by a small but growing number of UK producers. It also makes the whole range vegan without ARK Wines needing to market it as such.

The range runs to eleven wines from eight grape varieties. The Sol Riesling Pet Nat is the most distinctive, a sparkling wine made in the pétillant naturel style. The Field Blend rosé mixes six varieties, including Reichensteiner, Gamay and Pinot Noir, into one wine. Still Chardonnay, Bacchus and Pinot Gris make up most of the whites, alongside a still Pinot Noir when it's in stock.

ARK Wines is one of eight vineyards on the Suffolk Wine Trail, the county's official wine-tourism trail launched in 2026.

Mount Farm used to be a chicken farm before Hans and Kristin, originally from Sweden, took it on in 2018. The winery roof carries 58 solar panels generating around 20kWh a day, and the vineyard uses its own borehole for water, treating and returning wastewater to a man-made reservoir on site rather than drawing more than it needs.

Amanda, who runs the winemaking, studied Wine Production at Plumpton College, the UK's main wine education centre, before joining the family business.